


With All Due Credit to Conjurers

by haemodye



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF John, BBC Sherlock - Freeform, Crossover, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hogwarts, John Watson is a Saint, John is a Saint, John is a Very Good Doctor, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Post - Deathly Hallows, Potterlock, Quidditch, Sherlock Being Sherlock, Sherlock Is A Bit Not Good, Slow Burn, Teen Angst, Victor Trevor isn't a douche
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-06
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-10 01:09:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/780034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haemodye/pseuds/haemodye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Students of every age and every size had littered the platform that morning, some old enough to be in uni and waiting to finish their last year, some eleven or a few years older and heading out for the very first time. After two years of rebuilding, the trials and the reconstruction efforts, Hogwarts’ children are coming home.</i>
</p><p>When the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor requires all students to pick duelling partners, John finds himself at a loss; after all, who is going to want an off-kilter war veteran a year their senior? </p><p>Enter Sherlock Holmes. When the castle reveals that the school is still unsafe, Sherlock takes it upon himself to discover the source of the malaise. If only John wasn't so distracting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> So this was originally a request that got buried somewhere, but of course I had to make it into a Huge Thing. This will probably end up being one of my ridiculous novel-length fics. I apologise in advance for any not-British-enough issues, please point them out if you spot them. Same goes for any grammatical errors. Also, it's not as sad once John and Sherlock become friends, I swear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You know that a conjurer gets no credit when once he has explained his trick; and if I show you  
> too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that  
> I am a very ordinary individual after all."
> 
> \- Sherlock Holmes | from _A Study in Scarlet_ by Arthur Conan Doyle

When John is nine, his father tells him that anger is weakness. The healing spell stings stars into the back of his skull, but John was never a crier and so he inhales shakily and breathes. The bandages feel rough as sand when _ferula_ wraps around the tender skin, and when they’re clipped, John flexes his fist to test the tension. His knuckles swell hills behind the cloth.

“Fury shows a lack of acuity. To give in to it is to lose control, to break away from yourself and become whatever it is that ails you. True strength is in empathy, Johnny.”

John nods, because what else is there? _Primum non nocere_ – do no harm, above all else and before all other objectives. Through his father’s strong hand and his mother’s steady wand, John learns the strength of healing, the strength of holding a man down as he thrashes in order to pull the shrapnel out. As the Watsons move from one unstable country to another, John learns the strength of empathy in the face of hate, the strength of waking up at the start of each day holding hope for a people ravaged by war and political conflict. He will learn the strength of packing up a life and settling into each new, sick-stricken town with no complaint for the isolation. People are suffering all across the globe, and if the Watsons can heal the sick then they will move, and John will learn there is strength in dignity, too.

In Yemen, when Harry is beat into blood and flesh for daring to love another woman, salt seeping clear and bleeding red from eyes and mouth and wound, John will learn the strength of standing in for someone else. He will learn the strength of fighting down the fear and stepping into a fight, and he will learn strong and silent. He will learn the respect of knowledge, the power of words, and the way that often, love is stronger than fear.

When John is fourteen, their parents are felled by Somali pirates – brought in to cure an ailing crewmate of a commandeered ship and shot down with spells and rifles in the crisis. These will be the last lessons his parents teach him: first, that no magic can stop the click-bang of a bullet, and second, that muggles play by different rules. John’s father was a muggle: killed by two words and a stick.

But John will learn the strength in a wizard’s anger, too.

 

 

\----

 

 

“ _Bombarda_.”

 

Mycroft, unusually rumpled; unnoticeable to the untrained eye, but of course, Sherlock’s eye is trained. He’s gained a stone, too fat now to dodge it. Ridiculous, and frankly disappointing.

“ _Protego_.”

Sherlock sneers down at him over the balcony, eyeing his waistcoat with disdain; recently fitted, cloth too crisp for a well-loved suit. Too fat, yes; he’s outgrown his clothes. Sherlock flips his wand over his fingers in a lazy arc, smirking down at the obvious hair loss visible from his current vantage point. A tendril or two escapes the confines of perfectly coiffed hair. Not enough time to prepare, rushed out of London early this morning. Urgent visit, combined with thick humidity threatening at rain to cause the tiniest hint of frizz. Urgent visit and overeating? Mycroft’s been to stay with Mummy, which means they’ve had another chat about Sherlock’s ‘welfare’. Bags under his eyes would suggest he’s had a hard time at work, but Sherlock keeps abreast of the news so it certainly isn’t that. Father harassing him about his ridiculous affinity for the tedium of British politics, then. Boring, typical, Mycroft.

“You’re getting slow.”

“And your diction is deteriorating from prolonged exposure to French.” Mycroft talks about French the way Americans talk about eating snails. Hm.  Does Mycroft like escargot? Perhaps Sherlock could leave some in his umbrella. “Where’s _Grand-mére_?”

Sherlock blinks, honing in on the twitch of Mycroft’s throat; swallowing, the nervous tick of a man who overeats when stressed, and a tick his brother is very much aware of. Putting on a show? No. Genuinely distressed enough to betray his own fear. Terrifying, the thought of that, but intriguing. As for a decline of verbal acuity? _Preposterous_. “There is nothing wrong with my diction, Mycroft. Your waistline, however, leaves much to be desired. Or rather, leaves nothing to be desired, since clearly you’ve been stuffing yourself with no regard-”

“ _Grand-mére_ , Sherlock. Where is she?”

“And,” Sherlock continues, pointedly ignoring Mycroft’s growing irritation evident in the quirk of his eyebrow, “perhaps my diction would be more to your taste if you let me attend Hogwarts like every other-”

“You know it’s not safe, Sherlock.” Mycroft waves his wand with clear impatience, and Sherlock frowns down at him. A Holmes does not treat his wand in this manner, and he certainly does not interrupt. Or at least, Mycroft doesn’t, out of tedious decorum. Pointing wands is impolite, according to any wizard. In America, where more brutal magic is known to rear its head, pointing fingers is considered rude, too.

Sherlock doesn’t care, fear or not. It’s hateful, living with his _grand-mére_. The French countryside is apparently filled with nothing but pretty, airheaded girls who want nothing more than to chase after him and play with his curls. French magic is much too showy if Beauxbatons is anything to go by, and Durmstrang is all about force and power, not the spirit of research and knowledge. Hogwarts has space for people like him, even if the entire Holmes clan runs through Slytherin back to the days of Salazar — the four houses, a space for each and to each his own. Academia, undoubtedly Ravenclaw, to accept him into the fold; the first blue-bronze Holmes.

Sherlock’s mind reels with the wealth of opportunities denied him, just because of these ridiculous rumours about the Death Eaters salivating for initiates. Mycroft has been living like a muggle at his mother’s behest, but Sherlock knows he’s been enjoying the challenge. There’s something infinitely beautiful about a well-laid ruse and some careful planning becoming all you need to manipulate a nation. Sherlock can grudgingly admit that he can see the appeal in it; he simply doesn’t have the patience.

“She’s in the library,” Sherlock mutters, ignoring Mycroft’s lip-quirking triumph. No doubt they’ll be locked up for hours, discussing his future without any input from him. As if he is cattle, to be raised by outside standards without choice or merit. He slinks back to see to his cauldron; if he can brew the Draught of the Living Death at ten he’ll have officially beaten the family record. Maybe then his insufferable exile will be through. Perhaps then he can go home – home, London, brimming with life and the current of breath. A city, his city, strung in greys and mysteries and vibrance.

Mycroft will leave as expected – unexpectedly, without pause. In two years, his memories of the wizarding world will be wiped clean as per his parents' will. Sherlock will be condemned to the tedium of this home school education, and when Mycroft visits they will pack up the broomsticks and tidy the yard, pull in the beaters and close up the shed. They will sit sombre and wandless while Mycroft tells them that it’s not safe for Sherlock to attend his own parents’ funeral, while Sherlock burns to demand _why_ it isn’t safe and see his brother’s crippled mind grope for answers.  Instead, he throws himself into his work.

Sherlock will take many trips to London in these years, using a simple ageing potion and some careful planning. He will discover the bliss of a needle when the Elixir to Induce Euphoria is served with a cocaine cocktail and take his first private case from a woman who reminds him so much of his Mum. He will sell himself for drug money not out of need but curiosity, fall in with starving artists and drunken Dubliners, learn the cliché. He will revel in the thrill of being a magician in a world without magic, and he will thrive in the face of London’s mud.

And in years, when this cold war is over and The Boy Who Lived has killed The Dark Lord, Sherlock will pack a bag and take the ferry home. He will march into Mycroft’s office like he owns it with a small nod to Anthea, and they will pin Mycroft to his pretentious office chair and hold him steady as Sherlock pours each and every memory back into his skull, back into the vacant, pitted mind.

In the years to come, John Watson will wonder why he has done this; Sherlock dislikes his brother, the memories are raw, and someone else could have done it. Was it an act of kindness, or of duty?

And Sherlock will not be able to bear telling him that this is selfishness. Misery is not best borne alone.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Sometimes John thinks about Auschwitz.

“Klein, Randall.”

Not that John has ever been there, to see the horror himself, but when he thinks about the mistakes that the human race has made together – of Hitler and Grindelwald, Voldemort and Mussolini, of Pol Pot and the Black family and every bane there ever was – he wonders what it is that forces us to make the same mistakes over and over, again and again and again. What is it that reduces the human race to pointing fingers at one another in a misguided quest to label one thing as better than the next?

These are his thoughts as he waits to be placed on the proverbial chopping block, the huddle of students around him shivering with anticipation and fear. On the ride up, the Hogwarts Express felt like an animal released from its gates, the steady heartbeat of the engine pulling away rumbling softly beneath his feet. He’d shared a car with a few strangers without speaking a word because going to school after all these years of learning spells and rhetoric from the soft-spoken mouth of his mother feels as surreal as an endless dream. Leaving Harry behind had been the hardest part, but John knows better than anyone what an education means if one wants to be a healer.

“Kynder, Lara.”

And that phrase, _‘boarding school’._ It sounds so trite after all they’ve been through, to settle into their respective schools and attend classes every day, to feign normalcy after what they had seen, what they had done. What John had done.

Death is such a funny thing.

“Li, Oliver.” 

There is something grand about this, about the hordes of nervous, chittering students standing tremulously in this hall. After two years of rebuilding, the trials and the reconstruction efforts, Hogwarts’ children are coming home _._ Students of every age and every size had littered the platform that morning, some old enough to be in uni and waiting to finish their last year, some eleven or a few years older heading out for the very first time. The letter had said that all students would be placed not just in houses, but in years, dependent on the Sorting Hat’s mental assessment; an eighth year had been added for those who had been set to graduate the year the Battle of Hogwarts had taken place. Nothing like this had ever happened in the history of the wizarding community, but in light of the war and the destruction that had been wrought, nothing could be done about it. A few first years across the train aisle had been muttering frantically to themselves about Slytherin house, as if the entirety of the sect is cursed with a disease. The whole thing made John sick.

“Morris, Keaton.”

Of late, John finds himself wishing he’d never been born a wizard at all.

And it’s not that he doesn’t want to have magic. It’s not that magic isn’t useful, no, but sometimes John thinks about the way his sister looked at him when they were travelling, the way she would flinch away from his hand, and he wonders what it is that he has gained or sacrificed. Harry is safe in London, tucked away into the life of their father’s best friend like they hadn’t spent the last five years skipping from town to town, getting by on whatever small jobs they could scrounge up, trying to stay out of Europe at all costs and failing half the time. News of the end of the war had hit them with such unexpected vehemence that John had been forced to sit down, hard, and breathe deep. John hadn’t been home since he was seven and the idea of stepping foot in London again – the only sort of semi-permanent home his parents had ever claimed – was a terrifying prospect. But Harry needed a better education than John could provide for her, and the closest thing they had to family was in the city. They’d tumbled onto Doctor Ellison’s stoop with haggard faces and tight eyes and the man had stared at them for a full minute before saying anything at all. Apparently, they’d been presumed dead all this time.

He’d said, _“Why didn’t you come home?”_

 _“What home?”_ Harry had replied shortly, stepping into the house. John was grateful, in a way, for her brusqueness. How was he to explain that it would have been impossible to keep his family safe in Voldemort’s wake? Better to live poor and experience the world, or so they’d thought before Budapest. Now, John isn’t so sure.

“Watson!”

One of the boys from his train compartment elbows him in the ribs, and John blinks slowly.

“Isn’t that you?”

John swallows. “Right, sorry.” The crowd parts for him as he steps forward.

There is something terrifying about sitting on a stool in front of hundreds of hungry-eyed students. The new Slytherins look like they’ve all been kicked in the stomach, sick and green and mutinous as they watch from their table. This game has higher stakes than in the past, John realises. Years ago, a house sorting was simply a way to keep score, a way to gain new team mates and jostle one another; _“Congratulations. Welcome, friend.”_   Today, one of the four names is a death sentence. John wonders if this is what the founders intended.

“Watson, we haven’t got all day.”

John flushes and picks up the hat. The indomitable headmistress taps her foot meaningfully, and the crowd titters as John perches on the stool and lowers the Sorting Hat onto his head. There is a pregnant pause.

_Well, well, well. Aren’t you something interesting? A little old for Hogwarts, eh Johnny?_

John  clears his throat. “Yessir.”

_None of that._

“Yess- I.” John stops short. _Right. Sorry._

The hat tsks at him, and John squares his shoulders and sits straighter on the stool.

_Loyal, yes. Hufflepuff could suit you. But you’ve seen battle, haven’t you? Got a lot of courage there, a lot of anger, a little misguided angst. Not afraid to break the rules if that’s what’s needed, not afraid to- well. You’re very young._

John smiles bitterly at that. _Thought you said I was too old._

_Never too old to learn, but always too young to take a life. You’re not the only one in this room to’ve seen battle, but you’ve experienced more than most in the few years you’ve had. A lot of fear, there. A lot of sadness. You’re quick to learn, creative when it comes to a difficult situation. But your education has been varied, across disciplines, across cultures. Your knowledge is eclectic, practical. There’s ambition, yes, a doctor and a healer. That won’t be easy for you, no. You’re frustrated, I can see that much, with the average life, with the lack of action. And you are a wizard of action; you crave it, don’t you? You miss the danger, the purpose of it. Yes, I think so. What house is the easy decision, but what year to place you in…_

John frowns. _I’m an eighth year, surely._

 _Wrong! You are not ready._ The hat tsks at him again, and John draws himself up further.

_Wait. I can’t be here longer than a year. What about my sister, what about uni-_

The hat rattles violently on his head, and John freezes. _This is not about what is convenient for you! This is about what you are prepared for, and no matter how many wizards you have faced or battles you have won, you are still not properly trained in the finer aspects of magic. Can you turn a robin into a pincushion? Can you brew the Draught of the Living Death? No, the new eighth year is not the year for you. McGonagall has asked for the names of students who are more advanced in certain areas than others, and certainly your knowledge of healing, muggle affairs, and defence against the dark arts is very good. You know your practical magic, and I will make the professors aware. You will be placed into certain advanced classes accordingly. Perhaps you can graduate early. There are yet many things you do not know, John Watson, and that is why I cannot declare you an eighth year._

 _Then what?_ John demands. _Seventh? Then I can still graduate-_

 _Not quite, Watson._ The hat laughs wryly. “Gryffindor, sixth year, caveat!”

 _Sixth!_ John exclaims, but before he can speak aloud, McGonagall has snatched the hat from his head. “Waverly, Brian.”

John stands and steps aside, feeling numb.

 _Sixth year._ Surely he’s more advanced than that. Being placed in sixth year simply because he doesn’t know a few unnecessary charms? John knows everything relevant to everyday life, to his intended profession. He doesn’t have more than a year to spend at Hogwarts. This is absurd.

“Watson, you should take a seat.”

John starts guiltily, turning to see the same boy from before giving him a meaningful look. He offers him a nod before heading towards the Gryffindor table.

A sixth year. Being a sixth year means at least two years of schooling, two years away from Harry. Being a sixth year means two years not getting a medical degree, two years when he’s already eighteen, two years living off of the charity of their parents’ friends, two years not making a knut for ten bloody months. John closes his eyes and presses his palms into the throbbing sockets.

Two years of adolescent hell.

  

 

\----

  

 

Too excited, can’t sleep. The castle is alive, too full of people, of history, of the weight of the students, of joy and sorrow and being _full_ again, _gods_ , Sherlock can feel it thrumming in his veins.

Sherlock hates the people, though, the incessant excess of it, the way the students squirm and whine over stupid, silly things. Sherlock misses his _grand-mére_ in a way he never thought he would before. Sherlock even misses French. The first night sleeping in the dorms was hateful, even if it was good to have an old acquaintance in his house, yes, Stamford was a good ally and even better, useful. And Molly Hooper, too, quiet thing, had no idea how much younger he was than her, wanted to go into muggle forensics, Merlin knows why, but useful, yes. Useful was good. Ravenclaw was utilitarian, but moral, did Sherlock care about moral? Pursuit of knowledge, though, Sherlock could be proud of that. Always knew he’d be a Ravenclaw, stuff Mycroft and his Slytherin disgust, no…

Could he be proud? Sherlock could be proud, he thinks, if he tried hard enough.

Sneaking out is easy, if perhaps inadvisable, but there is always caffeine for sleepless nights and Sherlock does not sleep. Plebeian transport will always hold less relevance than exploration, and so at night Sherlock slips out and goes down to the lake to coax the mermaids out with barely cooked steaks and ivory combs. Their teeth shine cartilage bright in the darkness, but they tell him what he wants to know; the castle is sad because the castle is sick.

“There’s something wrong here, subtle things that people missed. What did the Death Eaters do?”

Sherlock has peeled almost all of his clothes off, the fabric lying in a pile by the edge of the water as he sits in the semi-shallow silt. The bubblehead charm had been useful back in France for beachside explorations, and it’s proved even more useful tonight in his inquiries. Next, he’ll look to the ghosts, but not quite yet. He doesn’t know them well enough yet, and people can be so tricky, especially the speaking dead. The dead are very good with grudges, and Sherlock is not very good at being polite. Manipulation is hard when the people you’re speaking to don’t have want of anything; there is nothing the dead want that you can feign offering.

“We cannot enter the castle. We do not know.”

“But you were here, all along. You saw something.”

The mermaids chitter to themselves for a moment. “You will come talk to us, if we tell you.”

Sherlock blinks slowly, playing dumb. “What?”

The first mermaid to arrive was startlingly beautiful, strange with silver rings knotted into her tentacled hair. Beauty, wealth, shiny things – status, the leader of this clique, the most curious, the oldest, perhaps? She flashes him a sharp smile. “We are alone, here. Before, we had many. Some would sing with us. Some would swim. Now, there is nothing. You are beautiful.”

Sherlock laughs, startled. “Beautiful?”

“You will promise,” she insists, and Sherlock tilts his head to the side before offering a hand.

“I will come. Once a month, at least.”

“Once a week.”

Sherlock shakes his head. “Twice a month.”

There is an exchange of glances between the merpeople. Sherlock knows they will take his offer. It is the best they’ve been offered in years.

“Twice. You will bring gifts.”

Sherlock lets a small smile escape as the first mermaid takes his hand and presses it to her collar. Some strange mermish habit – cross my heart and hope to die? Who invented that phrase? Who _wants_ to die? “I will come twice a month, and I will bring gifts. But you must tell me what you know.”

A network of mermaid spies. Useful. Fascinating. Sherlock could study their customs. Experiments are warranted.

“You can swim well?”

“Reasonably.” They want to take him somewhere. Where?

“You will come with us.”

Sherlock nods.

They take him by the hand, their rudimentary weapons held at their sides as they pull him along in the darkness. Not aggressive, but aware; trust, but verify. Sherlock can appreciate that. Their bodies are sinuous, strange, and as they delve deeper it becomes harder to make out their shapes, to see the slow twist of their bodies in the water. For a long time there is nothing, just muffled sound and the continual slick of water over his skin as they delve deeper into the dark. At length, a weak light appears in the distance, faintly greenish and steadily increasing. Sherlock squints uselessly into the water and feels for his wand in its wrist-strap holster, but  as they approach, he realises that they are taking him to the underbelly of the castle. And then it dawns on him; that the lake looks directly into the dungeons and that the mermaids, throughout the Death Eater occupation and the subsequent war, were in the perfect position to answer all of his questions.

“You see the others.”

A few Slytherins are scattered about their common room, reading or napping on the couches. It is late, 2:34 in the morning by his estimation. A blonde boy stands at one window, staring out into the depths.

“But they can’t see us,” Sherlock observes.

“It is too dark for them to see now. We do not come here during the day. We do not come here often.” Sherlock nods, knowing that their vision must be better than his in this muck. “This is where the squid comes, because it is curious. We do not like the squid.”

“What did you want to show me?”

The first mermaid clicks her tongue for a moment; Sherlock recognises it as a nervous habit. “We do not know what we saw.”

“What do you mean?”

“There were many lights. Many dead. We do not know which were who. Who was good. It was hard to tell in the fighting. We came to watch. We sometimes looked, before. When the bad humans were here, they came to this place. There was fear. They did terrible things to the younglings.”

“What sort of terrible things?”

Sherlock cannot see the mermaids, but he can feel them shudder. The movement in the water presses soft against his skin. “That boy. The pale one. He knows more than us. He suspects what we do not know.”

Sherlock squints through the murky water at the figure in the window. “I heard a rumour that Draco Malfoy came back to finish his education,” he muses quietly. “Is that who you mean? What is it that you think the Death Eaters have done?”

There is silence, and after a moment the mermaids begin to pull him away. Sherlock struggles in their grasp. “You said you would tell me.”

“That place is wrong.”

“What do you mean, ‘wrong’?”

The lead mermaid shakes her head again, silver glinting in the greenish halo of her hair. Silver, knives, danger.

“It is a drain. It is not safe. It has seen darkest magic. There was a thing living in the castle, and Harry Potter killed it. A dark serpent. It is like that.”

“There’s a basilisk?” Sherlock persists, frustrated. The language barrier leaves much to be desired, but there is little he can do about that.

“There are tunnels. There are spells that were left in the places no one sees, to suck the magic and the soul away. It is a curse against the joy. Human younglings are supposed to be joy. Like dolphins. Like summer rain.”

Sherlock smiles wryly at this estimation. “And these spells, are they slow-acting?”

“Many are slow like sickness. Some are quick and sharp.”

“Like a land mine?”

The lead mermaid shakes her head in confusion as she releases his wrist, retreating back into the darkness as he finds himself again in shallow water. From this distance all he can see is her eyes, and the divide between human and mermish habits frustrates him. They are nearly impossible to read.

“I do not know what that word is,” she says. “But they are danger. Smart. Like a shark.” 

 


	2. A is for Appetence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>           appetence (n) | ap-pe-tence  
>           1. intense desire, strong natural craving; appetite  
>           2. instinctive inclination or natural tendency  
>           3. material or chemical attraction or affinity

 

It’s been less than two weeks and already John can hear the rumours; he’s a returning war hero, he’s an undercover auror, he’s a delinquent, he’s a coward, he’s a killer. The Gryffindors like him well enough, because if John has learned anything after roughing it across Eurasia it’s how to charm anything with legs, but the other houses aren't so amicable. John would be too, if he saw himself in the baths; his body is a map of mottled scars running up and down the length of his skin, the muscle of hard work roped beneath in cords that strike the lines strange. Pair this with the inconsistent limp and the haunted look in his eyes and John is a mess too big to be borne by those who he hasn't been foisted on. It's a wonder the Gryffindors like him at all, but perhaps that's less inexplicable; after all, the entire house is all foolhardiness. John is eighteen with a bad shoulder and teeth marks that can only come from one kind of creature in his skin, an old man in a class two years younger and miles apart in maturity. Most of the students in his year never had to fight in the wars, but even then there is something different about _physical_ violence. Seeing a woman hit with the killing curse is not the same as watching a boy step on a land mine and his leg blow off at the joint; John knows, because he’s seen it all.

And he’s not the only one who’s a bit older and wiser, no, but John is just better at magic than many of his classmates, quicker on the uptake. Learning in the field means learning fast, especially when it came to protecting Harry. Every time he steps into a classroom he can feel his adrenalin ratcheting sky high without his own intent, the quick rush of _‘Learn quickly, while you still have the chance’_ drilled into his brain from years of hopping from tutor to tutor. In his brain he can hear them chiding him whenever he performs a spell; the antidiluvian cadences of an Egyptian necromancer, the kind lilt of a sophrosyne gypsy prophet, the clipped vowels of an Italian artisan skilled in blowing glass dragons that sang and climbed the walls with windchime footsteps. John had taken one when they left as a parting gift only to barter it for medicinal supplies in Gibraltar. He'd been loathe to part with the creature, but he needed to sell his trade for a little while to help pay for heating and food. These were the rules of their aleatory life; never too long in one place, never speak to English wizards, never speak your mother’s full name, never stop, never dally. And above all else and before all other objectives, _primum non nocere_ – do no harm, and assist the injured.

John sighs, staring out at the lake and shoving his hands into the pockets of his robes. He’d come out here to think and catch a breath of fresh air, but at this rate he just feels like jumping into the water. What this all boiled down to was that if John wanted to pass Defence Against the Dark Arts or be in the Duelling Club, Professor Delacruz had made it a requirement to have term partners. The problem was that no one would even consider taking John on.

“Watson? _John_ Watson?” John blinks, turning. “John Watson! By god, it is you! How’ve you been?”

There, approaching around the edge of the bank, is a stout Ravenclaw with small black glasses, waving maniacally and beaming bright.

“Sorry?”

“Mike Stamford. Blimey, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten me.”

John can’t help it; he feels his jaw drop. “Yes, sorry. Hallo.”

Mike and John’s parents had worked together at St. Mungos, back when John was living in London and his parents were content with urban life. At the time, having someone else around with a muggle doctor for a father had sounded like a blessing, and when he'd heard about Mike he’d introduced himself right off. The two had got on fairly well; back then, John had a nasty tendency to get into trouble, and Mike had been a patient friend for the sparse time his family had spent in the city. John hadn't heard any news of the Stamfords since the war started, but Ravenclaw suits Mike. He's put on a fair bit of weight.

Mike leans in for a handshake, brown eyes bright behind the thin black frames. “Last I heard your parents had dragged you off to Africa somewhere, patching people up and getting shot at,” he laughs. “I haven’t seen you in years! What happened?”

John purses his lips. “They got shot.”

Mike's face crumples in startled guilt. It's a cruel thing to say, and John expects the stammered apologies offered him. He allows Mike to take him down to Hogsmeade for a pint of butterbeer, but The Three Broomsticks is too full of students for John to fully relax. Even after his brief stint in London, large crowds make John nervous in a way he can't explain. The noise and the chatter makes it hard to concentrate on any one thing, but to his credit, Mike notices his discomfort and suggests they head back. They end up walking back towards the castle in awkward semi-silence.

“So. They placed you in sixth year but you’re taking DADA and Transfiguration with the eighth years?" Mike frowns a bit, the same bemused look he'd sported as a child when confronted with something that made little sense. Now, his face folds into something unfamiliar, the extra pounds and the slight sharpness of age striking his face strange. Still, John can't help but agree with his unspoken sentiments. "How’s the scheduling work?”

“And Potions with the seventh years.” John amends, scowling. The Watsons have never responded well to recreational liquids, and even the slight effect of three butterbeers has loosened his tongue. “It’s rubbish, and you can’t apparate in the castle so I’ve got to run to make it anywhere on time. Professor Delacruz is brutal about lateness, even though she knows I’ve got Herbology right before and ten minutes to get there. It’s all the way across the bloody grounds!”

“You don’t like her?” Mike laughs, low and easy. “That’s a first. Half my mates swoon when she enters a room.”

John chuckles despite himself. “She’s alright. I’m just-…” He exhales slowly, tipping his head back to stare at the sky. He can feel Mike's curious gaze weighing on him without bothering to look. “Every class, I get paired up with whichever poor sod can’t find a mate fast enough, and I wipe the floor with them every time. All the good ones are taken first. Forget about finding someone to do weekly practise with for homework or the Duelling Club requirements. We’ve got to turn in names for term partnership next week. I’m good– hell, better than most of the class – and that’s the problem; the entire lot wants nothing to do with me when it comes to being on the other end of my wand. Especially the Slytherins.”

“So?”

_“So.”_ John angles his gaze to the side, scuffing his feet on the path. “Who’d want me for a partner?”

Mike blinks for a moment before smiling, a spark lingering in the corner of his eye. For a moment John is nine, and in a fit of mischief they’ve decided to let a crate of baby kneazles loose in the children’s ward. Nurses scuttle back and forth in a laughing panic as the patients run amuck, tiny hospital gowns fluttering behind them as they tumble and excite the animals further. Mike is about to turn the whole lot a violent shade of glowing purple. His eyes glitter sideways as he laughs.

John shakes his head to clear the memory.

“You know,” Mike says, grinning slightly, “you’re the second person to say that to me today.”

John blinks at him. “Who’s the first?”

 

 

\----

 

 

Something specific about the way sound waves travel through water, versus its properties in air. Sound travels faster in liquid due to the differences in elastic modulus, but that wouldn’t explain something so drastic as the variant speech patterns. Mermish is not quite human, but underwater there is some magical property that allows there to be a modicum of translation. The merpeople can sense that there is something wrong with the castle, but most of the other students cannot. Professor McGonagall clearly knows something is wrong: the woman is too clever to be unaware, but she didn’t deem it so unsafe that the children couldn’t return. Typical, trading safety for education; wasn’t that the story of Hogwarts through the ages? Daft, finicky old thing.

Sherlock pets the windowsill beside him absently to demonstrate his fondness. He wouldn’t want it to get the wrong idea.

As to the case of Professor Slughorn’s missing mead, that was a simpler matter, and solving the problem would surely put him back in the professor’s good graces after the Wolfsbane incident. Hypothetically speaking, of course. Slughorn was stodgy, but easily manipulated; his good will could be nothing but useful.

“Well. I’m sure your mother would be proud.”

Sherlock startles at the sound of voices in the hall. Mike, speaking to an old friend? Knows his mother, so from before Hogwarts, so likely not a pureblood. Lighter footsteps, uneven; slight limp then, but not noticeable to most. Must be a boy; Stamford too awkward to make female friends in pre-pubescence. Sherlock turns, wiping his hands on his rag.

Mike is standing in the doorway with a dishwater-blond Gryffindor, the gaunt lines of his face spelling trauma with stiff lips and varied scars. Bags under his eyes, so sleeplessness — PTSD most likely — but tanned, so not directly from the Second Wizarding War. Farther East, then. Mothers knew each other, thus his parents were healers, likely part of some sort of peacekeeping force. What was the muggle organisation, Doctors Without Borders? Did they allow children? Too irresponsible, to take your children into a dangerous place, so not anywhere directly affected by war…  used to sun, somewhat safe for children, in great need of doctors and healers, and English speaking, most likely. Grew up travelling, spent time in a largely developed but still unstable area of the Eastern world, mother must have been killed somewhere in the process. No, too much trauma for that, must be both parents. Stayed on the continent, why?

“Mike, do you have a quill?”

Mike pauses at the table behind him, drumming his fingers on the wood. He’s excited. Interesting. “No. Haven’t got my bag on me.” He frowns. “You’ve always got a biro.”

“It’s out of ink.”

“You use muggle pens?” the stranger asks, and Sherlock favours him with a sharp glance. Definitely an English speaking country; no accent or dialect corruption. What places fit those parameters?

“This is John Watson, an old friend of mine,” Mike supplies. Sherlock raises an eyebrow.

“Quills are terribly impractical – and frankly pretentious – implements that serve only to perpetuate outdated decorum. Considering most recent events in wizarding history, you’d think we’d be glad to dispose of antiquity and move into the modern age, but no. We must rest on tradition.” Sherlock sneers slightly.

Mike is smirking at him. Ah, yes, ironic – thinks Sherlock is pretentious. Not quite unfairly, although a common mistake; arrogance is not interchangeable with pretentiousness. Still. _Touché._

The other boy seems taken aback, but he pulls a pen out of his pocket. “Here you are.” He holds it out lengthwise, careful not to point it at anyone. Curious: an American habit, avoiding pointing any object at a person, due to the prevalence of improvisational magic in the country. His hand trembles slightly as he holds it out, blunt fingers with perfectly trimmed nails. Meticulous, as fitting for a healer in training, and yet his PTSD has broken him beyond the ability to do fine surgery with an intermittent tremor like that.

"Ah." Sherlock nods at him. “Thank you.” He walks back towards his cauldron, fingering the object. Bitten at the end, but not nervously: aggressively, as if holding back irritation. John Watson is much too old for his classmates; frustrated at the material or frustrated at being misplaced?

Sherlock makes a few notes on his results before taking a bit into a vial and stoppering it. The rest he Vanishes with a wave of his wand.

He hands the pen back, fingers brushing against Watson's callouses. “South Africa or India?”

Watson blinks, eyes dark and guarded. It's impossible to discern their colour in the dim dungeon candlelight. “Sorry?”

“You grew up outside of England. South Africa, or India?”

“South Africa. I-”

“Fine. Are you stupid, or self-educated?”

Watson splutters. _“What?”_

“You’re what – eighteen? Clearly a talented duellist or you've seen combat, otherwise Mike wouldn’t have bothered to even consider the idea of a partnership between us, so I’m guessing you were placed in advanced classes for certain subjects and not others due to your lack of knowledge in the same areas of study I deemed arbitrary and unimportant to my own education. Such as History of Magic, seeing as we’re in the same level.” Watson looks startled, and Sherlock can feel his lips twitching slightly in amusement. “I sit behind you. You sleep through most of class so I'd hardly expect you to notice, although very clever of you to charm your hand to your quill so it looks like you’re taking notes.”

The Gryffindor flushes bright red, blood slipping up through its complicated network of capillaries to curl around the tips of his ears. Watson's face is delightfully expressive despite the belligerent conundrum he presents. What a fascinating little paradox. “How’d you know?”

Sherlock ignores this. “I taught myself magic up until the end of the war, for the most part, but you’re about three years older than I am, so I’ll ask again. Were you left behind in certain subjects due to inadequacy, or were you partially self-educated?”

“The latter,” Watson says, stepping a little further into the room, and _well._ Fight reflex, approaching a confrontation; shoulders back, legs apart, unconscious and braced for a blow. Seen combat indeed. “And who said anything about a partnership?”

Sherlock shrugs and gathers up his things, shrinking them and dropping them into his pockets.

“I did. This morning, I said to Mike that it would be nearly impossible for me to find a duelling partner. Now, here he is, with an old friend who’s clearly had significant practical battle experience. It’s not a difficult leap.”

“Excuse me?” Watson demands, eyes flashing, and _Yes, you'll do._ “Did you tell him about me?”

Mike shakes his head, skin crinkling around the corners of his lips. Sherlock restrains a frown; he is not a sideshow performance, put on for entertainment.

“We can meet tomorrow, by the lake. I have a few things to take care of. Have a good night. Mike.” Sherlock nods, satisfied, and heads for the door.

So. The Slughorn theft. Blue uniform fibres, not a Ravenclaw, no Ravenclaw would be stupid enough to leave that much evidence or even steal the mead in the first place. Thus, someone in close enough contact with a Ravenclaw, dating or a sibling, perhaps? The residue-

“That’s it?”

Sherlock stops with his hand on the door, spinning in place. Watson is staring at him with an unreadable expression, thin mouth flat and pursed. He raises his eyebrows.

“We’ve just met, and we’re going to partner up? We don’t know anything about each other. I don’t even know your name.”

Sherlock rocks in place for a moment, brain switching tracks, glancing at the clock in the corner as he processes. He’s got fifteen minutes to get to the main hall before the dinner rush and deduce who’s shagging a female Ravenclaw who wears entirely too much makeup. Likely Lara; she left a boyfriend back in Australia where she’d been sent by her parents during the war, and she’s been positively desperate for something to fill the void since she arrived. He has a bit of time.

“I know you’re a partial muggleborn who lived in South Africa for much of your childhood, but spent a significant amount of time afterwards travelling throughout much of Eurasia, certainly parts of the Middle East. Your parents were a doctor and a healer, killed violently, but by that time news of the war had reached you and so you stayed out of England and roughed it on your own at a young age despite having somewhat familial resources here, potentially because you were afraid for yourself, more likely because you have a squib sibling and you couldn’t bear the thought of losing what little remains of your family. I know you think you’ve been placed into the wrong year and that the other students are wary of you, and that your limp may be entirely in your head. Quite rightly I’m afraid.” Sherlock pauses, tipping his head to the side. “That’s enough to be going onwards, don’t you think?”

Watson stares at him, eyes wide. Intrigued, no longer belligerent. Can be persuaded. Good.

“The name’s Sherlock Holmes, and I can meet you around two o’ clock by the north side of the lake. Ta.”

He offers Watson a wink and steps out, shutting the door behind him. He’ll have to hurry if he wants to catch Slughorn’s thief.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Did you hear about James?”

John jumps, startled, as Bill slings an arm around his shoulders, his entire body practically vibrating with excitement.

“ _Jesus_ ,” John hisses, heart pounding hard against his ribs.

“Bill,” Bill corrects, shaking his head as if disappointed. John fixes him with a sharp glare.

“Make some noise, will you? I could’ve killed you.”

Bill pauses for a moment to fix John with a chiding eye, John stopping with him by force of the arm wrapped around his neck. “Now, that’s the kind of thing that gets the rest of the kids nervous,” he says sagely. “Can’t go around making threats like that, eh Johnny?”

“It’s not a threat if it’s true,” John mutters, shaking his head. “Let go of me.”

Bill sighs dramatically before pulling his arm back. “You wound me, John. You wound me.” He tucks his hands into his pockets with a grin. “What’s for lunch, you think?” John shrugs. “And did you hear about James or not?”

“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me all about it,” John says, starting down the hall again. In the distance, he can see the first wave of students trickling into the Great Hall.

“He’s dead.”

John stops walking.

“Well, okay, he might not be dead. They’re trying to revive him now I think. Apparently he jumped into the lake and nearly killed himself, seeing as he can’t swim. McGonagall’s in a tizzy about it. His parents were killed by the Death Eaters a while back and he’s been a little depressed, but that’s normal these days and nobody saw it coming. Do you really think he was trying to kill himself? There’s loads better ways to do it if he was, and he was a Slytherin after all, so it seems a little stupid-”

“Bill, shut up.”

Bill closes his mouth, brows raised in soft doe-eyed surprise.

“Which James is this?”

“James Phillimore, hangs around with Gary all the time? Bit odd, a Slytherin and a Hufflepuff being such good friends, but he’s alright for-”

“How’d they find him?” John interrupts, resisting the urge to throttle his friend. Bill was a good kid, but there was a bit of the class clown about him. Talking to him required patience, something John was running fair short on these days.

“They didn’t; it was the squid. It reared up and dumped his body in front of a few first years sitting on the dock. Probably scared the bloody skin off‘m, but there you have it.”

“And who told you this?” John asks, rubbing a hand over his face. Hogwarts was supposed to be safe, free from the death and destruction that the war had wrought. He hadn’t expected to deal with tragedy again so early. The shock of it had his pulse racing.

“No one. I saw them carting him in, and some Hufflepuff was sobbing and trying to explain the situation to Madame Pomfrey while they ran by. I followed them and listened while they spoke to Professor McGonagall.” Bill winces, scrubbing a hand through the spiked tufts of his afro. “Then the old bat caught me and took twenty points for being a nosy sneak, so…” He shrugs. “I ran off.”

John flexes his fingers for a moment, thinking. “Didn’t Higgs nearly drown in the lake on Thursday? I heard him saying it felt like something had been holding him down, but Anderson said he was probably just lying because he was embarrassed about it.”

“Anderson’s just jealous because Higgs’s sleeping with both Lara Kynder and some Slytherin girl. Anderson’s had his eye on her since day one.” Bill tilts his head to the side, considering. “You think the two are connected?”

“I don’t know,” John admits, taking a breath and forcing the tension out of his shoulders. He makes a second attempt at heading to lunch. “It’s a bit odd, though, don’t you think? Two Slytherins nearly drown in the lake in the same week, both one of the few students that’s actually able to get on with someone outside of their house?”

Bill wrinkles his nose, jogging to catch up with him. He turns to walk backwards and examine John’s expression. “If it’s someone with a grudge against Slytherin house, that’s pretty much anyone.”

John licks his lips but doesn’t say anything, wincing a bit when Bill’s carelessness leads to a sharp collision with a group of first years. “Yeah, but how many people have what it takes to kill another student? A grudge is one thing, but it takes real motivation to sustain a spell that’s intended to kill someone. You can’t just use the killing curse objectively; you really have to mean it. Any spell meant to drown someone is probably the same…”

John pauses, taking in the horrified expressions of the first years tangled in Bill’s robes, their clumsy attempts to scamper and flee. Bill stares after them for a moment before shaking his head. “This is what I mean. You’re a lost cause, Watson.”

John closes his eyes, dropping his head a bit as he bites back the urge to lash out. His leg twinges warningly. Unbidden, the image of Sherlock Holmes comes to him: his strange, slanted eyes clear and guileless as he picked John’s life apart with adroit accuracy. He hadn’t been using legillimency; John had checked from the first unlikely question out of the other boy’s mouth, and his shields were securely intact. It had almost been unnatural, and yet there had been no judgement in his words; only sheer curiosity and assessment.

“Hey, it’s alright.” John opens his eyes, tipping his head up to see Bill staring at him, a guilty expression plastered onto his face. “I still like you, even if you are a secret scary berk.”

“Not very secret,” John mutters, but he lets Bill drag him into the hall. The Ravenclaw table stares at him as they walk by, and John lets his eyes slide over the other students with a blandly pleasant expression, searching the rows of blue for a shock of dark curls.  Holmes is nowhere to be found, and John frowns as Bill shoves a few third years over to make room at the Gryffindor table.

“Wotcha looking at?”

“Nothing.” John swings a leg over the table as Bill clutches a hand to his heart, the other already reaching for a meat pie.

“Oh, _Johnny_ , how could you lie to my face like that? I thought we were friends!”

John shoves at his face with one palm. “Oy now, you bloody oik. That’s enough. You’re an embarrassment, is what you are.” Bill sticks his tongue out, and John rolls his eyes heavenward in a silent plea for patience. “I was looking for Holmes. You know him?”

Bill raises thick eyebrows, mouth gaping open and still full of food. “What?” John winces and turns his head.

“What are you like? Close your mouth, for God’s sake.”

Bill does so, chewing furiously, and John sighs. Children, the lot of them. He doesn’t recall being this annoying at fifteen, but then again he’d to take care of Harry at the time. He helps himself to some sprouts and a sandwich.

“What the hell are you hanging around him for? Holmes is mad. The whole family’s mad-”

“If you’re about to start on that pureblood shite again you’ll be off to Madam Pomfrey,” John warns. Bill has the grace to look abashed.

“They’re just rumoured to be a bad lot, is all.” John glares at him, and Bill rolls his eyes. “Besides, I’ve dealt with Holmes. I got paired up with him in Muggle Studies while we were learning about muggle alchemy, right?”

“Science,” John interjects, and Bill nods seriously.

“Yeah, we were supposed to be doing a simple experiment to show how muggles can do magic without magic. Did you know they can grow crystals and make things smell like bananas with nothing but something they call chemicals? Muggles are amazing!” Bill turns to rummage in his pockets and pulls out a magnet. He holds it over his fork, and John watches with an exasperated smile as the fork sticks to the north end. “How cool is that? We made these with currants, and Professor Kapoor said we could keep them.”

“Bill.” Bill turns to face him, and John bites back a snort. “First off, I think you’re confusing that with an electromagnet, which is made with an electrical current. Second, we were talking about Holmes.”

Bill looks down at his food, and John realises he’s probably blushing. Lucky, that; Bill’s skin is too dark to show a flush, when John knows that his ears are always the first to betray his embarrassment or anger. He takes a moment to feel guilty for his frustration.

“Look,” John says, a suspicion forming, “and feel free to tell me off, but, have you ever been tested for attention deficit disorder? Or rather, ADHD, considering how excitable you get.”

Bill looks up, brows furrowed. “No. What’s that?”

“It’s… it’s where you have a lot of trouble focussing or staying still. You’re alright in classes like Charms where we’re doing things with our hands, but when it comes to History of Magic you’re tapping your quill and fidgeting, always up and going to the bathroom three times in a period. I doubt you’ve only got a bladder issue on Monday and Wednesday mornings.” Bill snorts, and John smiles back.

“So, what, you think there’s something wrong with me?” Bill asks, and John shakes his head.

“No, not at all. It’s not… I’ll just…” John straightens, taking a moment to breathe and collect himself. “Tell you what, I’ll go ask Madam Pomfrey about it and see what she says, alright? I don’t have to mention your name at all. I’ll just ask her a few questions, see what there is to be done. Would you be okay with that?”

Bill shrugs. ”Yeah, sure, if you think it’ll help.” He picks at his mash, propping one arm on the table. “Honestly, you’re right; I’m rubbish at focussing. It makes it really rough for me when we’ve got exams. And writing a Potions essay? Merlin, kill me.”

John laughs and shoves at him a bit. “Ah, come off it. We’ll figure it out, yeah? Now what’s this about Holmes?”

Bill shudders dramatically and takes another bite of his meat pie. “Well, we were working on an experiment, right? Just a simple thing, Professor Kapoor says. Nothing too complicated, just so we get an idea of what the muggles are doing in their schools. Except Holmes is off on his side of the table not even looking at the instructions on the board. He’s fiddling around with these chemicals and stuff that’s meant for the next experiment, and then all of a sudden there’s a hissing noise and bam! The whole table goes up in smoke.”

John snickers. “He blew up the table?”

“He did it on purpose!” Bill insists, spraying crumbs everywhere. John winces at the sight. “He was laughing, saying that it was much better in person, whatever that means. Professor Kapoor was so shocked, but I’ll tell you this.” Bill glances around before leaning in, eyebrows raised. John leans towards him in response. “Holmes threw up a shielding charm without his wand.”

“What?” John rears back, and Bill nods his head before taking a sip of his pumpkin juice.

“Yeah. One minute I was reading the measurements on a glass tube, the next the table was exploding. But get this; nobody was injured. Professor Kapoor couldn’t see Holmes had done anything he wasn’t supposed to because the table was blown to bits, so he got thirty points for throwing up a shield charm to protect the other students. Smug as a kneazle, that one.” Bill scowls a bit, shoving another spoonful of mash into his mouth. “But we’re not to use our wands in that class, and I saw Holmes shove his into his bag. He wouldn’t have had time to get it out. By the time everyone was settled, he was holding it, but I swear he wasn’t before then.”

John takes another helping of sprouts before turning back to look at Bill. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.” Bill bites into a roll. “He’s trouble, mate. Serious.”

John nods, chewing absently. Holmes couldn’t have been more than fifteen. Surely he wasn’t capable of wandless magic just yet? John had studied every day for weeks with Daj Constantin before he could even light a candle without his wand, let alone do something as complicated as a shielding charm. Even now, he probably wouldn’t be able to do one large or powerful enough to contain a small explosion in such a short period of time. Or maybe even at all.

“John. Did you hear me?”

“Hm?” John shakes his head and looks down at his plate. “Yeah, I heard you. Trouble.”


	3. B is for Balter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>           balter (v) | bal-ter  
>           1. to dance or tread artlessly, without form or skill, but with much enjoyment  
>           2. to stick together

 

Music is a fabulous substitute for a drug habit.

Or this is the way it seems to Sherlock, at any rate, letting his body sway as Saint-Saens’ _Le Carnaval Des Animaux_ washes over his frame. The swelling hills of it ripple through his shoulders as he moves with the breadth of the tones, and in his mind he is joined by the slow footsteps of a piano, the delicate chime of a harp. He can only do the piece so much justice with the violin instead of the oft-overlooked cello, but “Le Cygne” had always been a favourite of his when he needed tranquillity. Distantly, he can register the sound of his mermish informants up against the edge of the lake, water lapping against their bodies as they shift lazily in the mud. He has kept his promise, in exchange for whatever snippets of information gleaned from the students and teachers as they pass along the banks or over the surface of the water. Two visits a month, and today this is his gift; music, and whatever peace it may bring. All merpeople or otherwise display an irrational fondness for music; useful, considering his talent.

Currently, all Sherlock can think about is his irritating class placement, and his potential partnership with one John Watson. Does Watson have a middle name? He’ll have to inquire.

Sherlock scowls as the piece slides toward its close.

It’s not that Watson seemed particularly irritating; just the opposite, in fact, but people frequently underestimate him just because he’s young. Sherlock knows rationally that this is because people are idiots, but in light of recent historical events it’s just made him incredibly frustrated. Potter was younger than the entirety of the Ministry and yet he’d managed to save the entire bumbling lot from certain death, or what would have essentially been slavery. Why couldn’t people just use their brains?

He finishes with an embarrassing amount of vibrato and a sweeping bow for effect, the mermaids tittering dangerously in delight but careful not to raise their voices. The screeching sound of their words above the water would ruin the calm Sherlock has built, and even the mermaids with their strange customs and unreadable faces can appreciate the spell cast by a well-executed performance. When he opens his eyes, the leader inclines her head in a regal gesture before disappearing beneath the surface of the lake. The others follow after flashing sharp-toothed smiles.

Sherlock breathes deep for a moment before bending down to gather his cleaning cloth from its case, wiping away the excess rosin dust with perfunctory haste. A sound – grass crunching wetly – from behind; Watson is early, has been watching him. Sherlock restrains a derisory snort.

“I can hear you thinking. Quaint, but irritating.”

Watson clears his throat and steps towards him warily. No limp, so intrigued enough to have forgotten about it. Interesting. Perhaps with further study it could be eliminated entirely? A bit of experimentation would certainly make their partnership more interesting, and having an entirely functional duelling partner would only be beneficial to Sherlock’s educational advancement.

“Sorry, just… wow. You’re very good.”

Sherlock snaps the violin case shut and turns with a raised eyebrow. “I know.”

The Gryffindor is rumpled, crumbs lurking in the folds of his clothes, so came here straight after lunch. Carrying his bag, had intended to sit here and do work until Sherlock showed up, presumably. Punctuality is always a plus. Studious, poor, here on scholarship? Takes his studies very seriously, regardless. There’s a bit of ink smudged on the side of his nose. Sherlock restrains the urge to rub it away.

Watson’s eyes crinkle at the edges. Amusement? In this light, it’s easier to tell that they’re blue. Dark, but blue all the same. “And modest, too.”

Sherlock frowns. “You offered an assessment of my skills. I agreed with you, being self-aware enough to measure my own talents. Why display false modesty when we’re both informed of the facts?”

Watson stares at him for a moment before laughing incredulously. There is warmth in it, though, not derisive the way Sherlock would expect. He offers a hesitant twist of his lips in response, hoping it resembles something akin to a smile. No sense in starting off on the wrong foot so early.

“Well,” Watson says, still grinning, “you wanted to meet me. Here I am. Any reason you’re doing private concerts for mermaids?”

Sherlock raises an eyebrow at him. Squints at the sight of a black dot in the distance, coming closer over the forest; broad wingspan, heading straight towards them without any sign of hunting behaviour, too black to be a school owl. Excellent. “You’re early,” he says absently, holding a hand up to shield his eyes. Yes, definitely Urania. Sherlock lowers his hand and turns back to the Gryffindor. “I still have over half an hour before two, by my estimate.”

Watson glances at his pocket watch – well cared for, carefully crafted, a beautifully intricate working of gears, but somewhat feminine for a man such as him so likely inherited from his dead mother – then shrugs and drops his belongings on the grass. His cloak is wrapped around the strap of his bag; too hot despite the time of year, the last dregs of summer too stubborn to leave just yet. Sherlock prefers the colder months, personally; warm humidity works something Unforgivable on his curls.

Watson follows his bag with a soft huff. “I’d planned to come and get some reading done first, at any rate. If you have work to do, you’re welcome to join me.”

“Obviously.”

Watson blinks at him, in the middle of pulling out a book. “Right. Well.” He clears his throat, suddenly uncomfortable. Sherlock rolls his eyes and turns back to the sky. “Sorry, what are you looking at?”

Sherlock holds an arm out as Watson turns, just in time to catch Urania as she extends her claws. Overfed, bored, hasn’t flown more than a mile. He pulls the scroll from her leg with his free hand, shoving the parchment in his pocket and pulling out a bag of Eeylops. Not that she needs them. Spoiled thing.

“Aren’t you going to read that?”

Urania chirrups impatiently, blinking black eyes at him as she shifts onto Sherlock’s shoulder. He wrinkles his nose at her, smiling slightly as she nips at his fingers when she takes the offered treat. Ridiculous creature. “No need,” Sherlock says, transferring her back to his wrist before tossing her off. She squawks indignantly at his brusqueness as she heads towards the castle. He’ll pay for that, later.

“What?”

“You’re training to be a healer _and_ a doctor.”

Watson tilts his head to the side, tongue darting out for a moment as he considers this. “Yes.”

“Any good?”

“Very good.”

Sherlock smiles briefly. False modesty indeed. Watson smiles back like he gets the joke. “Treated a lot of non-wizards, I take it; goblins, vampires, anything you could do for money.”

“Yes.” Curious, not quite defiant. Doesn’t understand what Sherlock wants.

“And seen a lot of violence, living as you had.” Moving from place to place, victims of disease and war and violence. Watson’s eyes are bright and sharp.

“Yes, enough for a lifetime.” His voice is steady, but his muscles have coiled. _Fight or flight_ , Sherlock thinks wryly.

“Want to see some more?”

Watson frowns, but his eyes are glittering with intrigue. Yes, Sherlock can work with this. Watson is cleverer than the average Gryffindor brute, and from what he’s seen so far, much more reasonable. He hadn’t shied away at the mention of the Holmes name, for one. And he’s curious, which is always exploitable.

“Come on,” Sherlock says, opening his bag and dropping his violin case in. A simple extension charm, but Watson is clearly impressed and he takes a moment to stare. Sherlock digs in until his fingers brush wood and pulls out his broom.

“What else have you got in there?” Watson asks curiously, packing his things back up.

Sherlock shrugs, mounting. “Essentials.”

Watson is still staring, bag hanging from one shoulder as his eyes travel the length of Sherlock’s broom. “What _is_ that?”

Ah, yes. Watson is incredibly nationalistic in his own way, likely bred by his parents. Queen and Country and British imperialism, helping the ‘lesser’ in the world. Sherlock bites back a sneer. “My broom,” he replies curtly. No time for this. “Well, are you coming or not?”

“You want me to ride with you?”

“It’ll be much faster than walking.”

“On that?”

Sherlock sighs and kicks up from the ground. “Never mind.”

“No, no, wait.” Watson jogs towards him and swings a leg over, hesitating a moment before reaching around to grip Sherlock’s waist. “This is ridiculous.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes and pulls up, the lake dropping away from their feet. “You’re a Gryffindor, Watson. Show a little backbone.”

Watson chuckles wryly. “Then show me what you’ve got.”

 

 

\----

 

 

Holmes flies like a madman.

John is very good with a broom, almost out of necessity; he prides himself on his versatility in the field, if only because a game of friendly Quidditch is the best way to make quick friends in a new place. Harry had even been bugging him to try out for the team, but John’s not sure if he’s interested in that kind of commitment. He’s not sure if he’d be welcome on the field. But Holmes flies like the laws of physics are a personal affront, a challenge to be tested in kind. Despite having to account for two bodies, despite their bags hanging off the sides of their shoulders and altering the balance with each shift, despite the fact that John has been unable to predict every single move thus far and hasn’t been leaning to assist the curves, Holmes flies like a bloody madman in the best possible way. John is too adrenalin high to be jealous.

They fly around the edge of the lake with toe-curling speed and cut over the top of the Quidditch pitch. Below, John can just make out a few students messing about with what looks like a muggle soccer ball in place of a Quaffle before they pass by in a blur of colour and movement. He can’t help but wonder what kind of picture he and Holmes make, two boys on the back of the Ravenclaw’s bizarre broomstick and still in their school uniforms. Holmes’ broom is clearly not English, its dark sides marked up and down with strange pictorial symbols, the bristles a multi-coloured, finely feathered spray. It lacks the footrests that have come into style in the past ten years as broom speeds increased to the point of instability, but John can feel a gentle pressure at the base of his spine as Holmes makes a heart-stopping nosedive towards the Gamekeeper’s hut. Some sort of cushioning spell to maintain balance, then.

“Slow down,” John hisses, and he can feel Holmes’ snort rumble through his chest like a racing engine. The Ravenclaw obliges regardless, slowing to a much more reasonable pace before touching feather-light on the grass. “Show off.”

Holmes ignores this. In fact, John barely has time to process that they’ve landed before Holmes has taken off, dropping his belongings unceremoniously and disappearing into the small cabin with a dramatic swirl to his robes. John blinks for a moment before following, Holmes’ broom in one hand and his bag in the other.

“Bloody berk,” John mutters, knocking against the doorframe.

“Sherlock! You didn’t say nothin’ about bringin’ other students.”

John blinks, stepping back from the door. The muffled sounds of footsteps echo from inside, the enormous bulk of Professor Hangrid a shuddering counterpart to the nervous patter of Holmes’ pacing. John clears his throat awkwardly.

“He isn’t here for deductive purposes; he’s an experienced healer. His input could very well be invaluable to my investigations, but more prudently for you, he may be able to assist with recovery.”

“What can’e do that Madam Pomfrey can’t?”

“Are you planning to involve the administration in this matter?”

Silence. The door swings open.

“Quickly.”

John steps inside and shuts the door behind him.

The interior of the hut is dark, small flickers of light appearing around the edges of covered windows. A lantern lights the corner of the room, a few dying embers emitting a soft glow from the fireplace, and it is here at the hearth where Holmes is perched, bent over a shadowed figure. Laboured breathing echoes throughout the room, and in the dim light John can just make out the form of something furred and muscular lying supine at Holmes’ feet.

“Watson, ain’t it?”

John blinks and turns to his left, head tipping back in order to see the gamekeeper’s face. The man is absolutely enormous. “Er. Yes, John Watson. I’m in your Tuesday morning class.”

“ _John_ Watson,” the man says, sticking out one mammoth hand. John shakes with some hesitance. “You did a fine job with those dugbogs last week. Yer a healer, then?”

John straightens at that. “My mum was a healer, my father a muggle doctor. I’m working to get my certification as soon as possible.”

Hagrid nods at this. “Sherlock a friend a yers?”

John opens his mouth, then closes it again. “Er.”

“Come and look at this.” John turns, grateful for the interruption.

With Holmes’ body out of the way, John’s view of the creature is left open. He steps around the sofa, taking in the sight of what looks like smoke curling from silvered fur, a moonlike glow reflecting sharp against Holmes’ high cheekbones as he bends over the creature. His fingers hover over a deep wound in the animal’s side, and John crouches across from him to examine it better. The residual heat from the fireplace warms his spine as he looks up at Holmes, then over at the shadowed hulk of Professor Hagrid.

“This is a gytrash.”

“That it is,” the man agrees, nodding.

“These are dangerous. Are they even allowed on school property?”

“Oh, rules,” Holmes sneers, and John twists his head to look at him. “Just examine the body. Tell me what you see.”

John stares at him, and Holmes raises an eyebrow in challenge before leaning over the creature, reaching a hand out to touch the wound.

“Don’t!” John snaps, and Holmes grins triumphantly as John swats his hand away. “You’ve probably got all sorts of germs on you. Hold on.” He pulls out his wand, looking at Holmes for a visual confirmation. The other boy rolls his eyes in response.

“If you must.”

“ _Scourgify_.” John does his own hands before pocketing his wand and getting to work.

He starts with the creature’s ribs, flinching when the gytrash growls furiously at him. It’s clearly been petrified or bound by a spell, but John can see its thin muzzle trembling with fear, and he takes a moment to hold his hand in front of its nose.

“Hush, now. We’re here to help you, yeah?” The creature sniffs suspiciously, and John scratches it behind the ears as it growls again, albeit softer this time. “Alright, now what’s all this, then?”

Its ribs are broken. He can see that immediately, even before he reaches out to brace his hands over the creature’s flank. Its pelt is soft as the smoke peeling from its skin, and John takes a moment to appreciate the gytrash’s beauty, for all its fearsome reputation. This is a creature built for agility; every inch of it is muscle and bone, its long legs tapered lines broken only by the soft swell of joints and ankles. A wide-barrelled chest thins to a pinched waist, the spine evaporating into a tail that’s more mist than corporeal. Its shoulders swell steep plateaus beneath the silver fur. It growls at him, and John hushes it and mutters a charm to numb the pain before continuing his examination.

“Nothing unfixable,” he decides. “Its spine isn’t broken or anything like that, and it doesn’t feel like he’s got a punctured lung. High impact broke his ribs, so the wound was secondary; this wasn’t a stabbing. Something gouged him.” John frowns, feeling around the edges of the wound. It’s rough at the edges, not a clean cut. Blood seeps sluggishly from the flesh. “I think he was kicked. I’ve seen this kind of injury before, in people who’ve been kicked by horses or cows. The hooves can break the skin at a high enough speed, and that would explain the broken ribs. I can fix this easy, but he’ll need to sleep it off and he’ll be starving when he wakes up.”

“I can handle that,” Professor Hagrid says roughly, and John looks up to find Holmes’ unsettling gaze boring into him, an inscrutable expression on his face. “You can really help ‘im?”

John turns to the gamekeeper. The man’s eyes are frosted with moisture, and John’s heart softens a little at the sight. “Yes.” John scratches his forehead with the back of his thumb, wincing as he smears blood across his skin. He’d forgotten about that. “I’ll be honest, Professor; I’ve never worked on a gytrash before, but I’ve seen broken ribs in humans and animals. In my experience, if you hadn’t had someone look at him, he could’ve suffocated; his lung is holding up now, but in a few hours it probably would have collapsed.” Professor Hagrid’s eyes spill over, and Holmes sighs as the professor pulls out a rag and swipes at his nose with it. “But if I fix this now he’ll be good as new by tomorrow at the latest,” John adds hurriedly. Christ, is the man really crying?

Holmes claps his hands together, standing. “Well, get to it, then. We haven’t got all day.”

John balks at his audacity, but Holmes is right. He pulls out his wand and gets to work, first using _tergeo_ to clean the creature’s fur so he can get a better view of the wound. The gytrash whimpers in response, and John smooths a hand over its ears before turning back to the wound.

“It took so long to catch’m as it were. You can ask Sherlock. I saw the poor thing last night but I couldn’t find him come dawn, and Fang was too scared to go smellin’ for him, great coward that’e is. I told Sherlock to come an’ have a look in the afternoon, hoping I’d’ve found him by then, or if not we could look all together. Thank Merlin I found’m when I did.” John nods absently, running a soothing hand down the creature’s spine as he begins to set the bones one by one. “So, what happened, then?”

John licks his lips, considering.

“Something has been preying on the students.”

John’s mouth snaps shut, embarrassed as he realises that the professor had not been asking him. He’d been talking to Holmes.

_But hang on. Why?_

“What d’you mean?”

John can hear Holmes’ snort of derision. He ignores it in favour of setting the next rib, muttering spells for cleansing and healing as he goes. The gytrash is trembling beneath him, and John lays another spell for the pain against the creature’s skin. “Sorry, love. Just a tic.”

“You do know it can’t understand you?”

The bone has twisted slightly at the sternal angle, and John applies a bit of pressure to fit it back before shifting the bone into place. He stills when he realises that Holmes was speaking to him.

“It’s not about the words,” he says slowly, glancing up for a moment to take in Holmes’ expression. His eyes are narrowed in careful assessment, head tilted to the side as he considers John’s face, his hands on the gytrash’s body. “It’s about the tone. As long as I keep my voice like this, he doesn’t feel threatened. It’s just a calming technique.”

Holmes snorts, but his eyes gleam with approval, and John turns back to the wound with an unfair amount of pride swelling in his chest. “You apply your bedside manner to beasts as well as beings,” he says, as if commenting on the weather. John smiles a bit and presses the tip of his wand to the place where the rib’s snapped clean through.

“ _Veloni. Katharos. Asclepis,_ ” he murmurs, running a thumb across the break. He waits for the bone to smooth over, murmuring the spell again for good measure until it does not give under his fingertips. “ _Finite incantantem.Nark_ _ō._ ”

Vaguely, he is aware of Holmes speaking; his voice is low, deep for a boy his age, but it matches his height. The Ravenclaw is tall, at least three inches taller than John, but he can tell from his bone structure that he’s not finished yet; Holmes’ legs are too long, his spine not quite caught up to his shins, his forearms a sight too gangly. There is something alarmingly graceful about his movements when compared to his mismatched frame.

 _A heron_ , John thinks, slipping a hand under the gytrash’s body to feel the ribs he cannot see. _That’s what he reminds me of. A heron_.

“Look at that injury; clearly the initial blow was meant to be fatal. It was in no state to run after a blow like that. Gytrash hunt in packs, and they are fiercely loyal. Its pack would have come back for it if they were chased off, and anything that could chase off a pack would have the ability to finish the job. If the rest of the pack was killed, surely this one would have been killed with them. Furthermore, if I’m right, that injury came from a unicorn’s hoof. Unicorns are not known for violence; they are gentle, moral creatures that much prefer to turn from violence than fight against it. Whatever happened to its pack, it was not the unicorn’s doing. So what happened?” John stills, attempting to process the barrage of information Holmes has assaulted them with. “Well?”

John tilts his head to the side, licking his lips. “Maybe the pack cornered the unicorn, and it kicked at this one so it could escape.”

“Are you listening? They wouldn’t have left it behind,” Holmes says impatiently. “Hagrid would have stumbled upon a pack of angry gytrashes and been eaten alive.”

“Oy, now, hang on a minute-”

“You said you originally saw it by the lake late at night, which you found odd because they hardly ever come this close to the school. What could have forced a gytrash to break cover? Look at the state of it; it hasn’t eaten for days. It’s clearly weak, which would explain how a unicorn was able to catch it unawares and attack it in the first place. That implies that it’s been without a pack for longer than the time that’s lapsed since the incident, which by my estimate was no more than a day ago; hunting alone is much harder, which explains its weakness. And what’s been drowning the students? Or, attempting to, clearly with little effect.” John can hear the sneer in Holmes’ voice, and his head snaps up to examine his expression. The other boy just keeps on talking, rapid fire in his stream of thought. “Whatever killed its pack was using the gytrashes as a test run; it succeeded, and this one returned to the lake alone to try and avenge its packmates. Look at the mud on its paws and the matting in its fur; that’s not dirt from the forest, it’s clay from the banks. It was knee-deep in the water at some point. I’ll test the blood sample I took for flakes of gold, but the unicorn must have mistaken it for whatever’s been threatening the students and the other creatures and attacked it. Probably a mother protecting her foal. Whatever drove the gytrashes out of the forest has clearly been harassing the other beasts.” Holmes scowls, brushing his cloak off. “Letting this one live was a stupid mistake. How disappointing. I’ve already solved it.”

“Solved what?” John asks, watching as Holmes rolls his eyes and picks up his bag. He shoves his broom into it with a grunt. “Where are you going?”

“I wanted a test run to assess your skills, but you’ve proven yourself to be capable in a high-stakes situation, and a fine healer. Considering the validity of your claims regarding your own proficiency in the matter, I may similarly trust your abilities in Defence Against the Dark Arts. Thus, a preliminary duel is no longer necessary.”

John stares for a moment, processing. “So that’s it? You’re just going to leave?”

Holmes shrugs, slipping the strap of his bag over his shoulder. “You’ve clearly got a while longer, and I’ve got to run tests on the blood samples I took. Ta.”

He’s gone before John can come up with an acceptable reply.

“Sorry,” John says, turning to face the professor, “what just happened?”

“He’s somethin’, ain’t he?” Professor Hagrid asks, and John gapes at him before shaking his head. He turns his attention back to the wound. “Bit of a toff, but sharp as a whip that one. I’ve never seen the like. I reckon if he wasn’t so bristly he might get on with Hermione, but as is he hardly gets on with anyone, an’ our Hermione, well. She ain’t quite the social butterfly herself…”

“He…” John pauses, eyes trained on the heaving silver fur in front of him, the blood staining the tips of his fingers.

Holmes was abrasive, but clearly charismatic; he’d convinced John to do as he pleased. He’d charmed the professor well enough to allow himself access to the situation when he’d been hesitant to even open the door for John, and only God knew how Holmes had managed to ingratiate himself so quickly. He played the violin _beautifully_ , enough to leave John breathless by the lake, and John had never been one for classical music. He spoke a mile a minute and, as far as John could tell, had absolutely zero interest in social conventions or white lies. He was rude, brusque, and irresistibly intriguing.

“He’s _incredible_ ,” John says, blinking a bit as he realises it. “How the hell did he do that?” And then, “Er, sorry Professor, I mean-”

“Hagrid.” John tilts his head up to look at the gamekeeper, watching him take a seat on the couch in front of the gytrash.

“Oh, I don’t-”

“Hush,” the man says sternly, lifting a finger. “You’ve saved this feller’s life, no questions asked, despite knowing what it could cost you. You’re a scholarship student, aren’t you?”

John flushes, turning back to the wound. He thinks of his threadbare robes and the cheque that had come in the mail, enough to cover the cost of books and secondhand robes and the various supplies required for attendance at Hogwarts. “Yeah. Obvious, is it?”

“Not at all,” the – _Hagrid_ – says, shaking his head. “It’s our job to know, ain’t it? Look out to see if everything’s in order, if you have all your books or you need anything. You aren’t alone, far from it; lots of people lost their homes, or their entire livelihoods in the war. The school might not’ve come through for everyone without donations.”

John nods, feeling along the line of newly strengthened ribs. Finding no lingering weakness, he sets to work on the flesh.

“What I mean to say, is, thank you, and yer welcome any time you need anythin’ at all.”

John smiles as the last of the gytrash’s pelt knits together. “There we are,” he says, brushing a hand over the creature’s ears. It whines a little in response. “Take a nap, hm? _Somnus_.”

He smiles as the creature drifts off.

“Where’d you learn all that? I’ve never seen that kind of spellwork from a student. Healing is a special art, an’ the school don’t teach most of it.”

John shrugs, using _tergeo_ to siphon the blood from his hands. He wipes his forehead with the edge of his robe; he’s been sweating. “Like I said, my mum was a healer. I was homeschooled until she died, and I spent most of the war learning what I could, on my own or from others.”

The professor nods. “It’s a hard life, taking care of yourself.” John waits for him to elaborate, but instead he watches as the man drapes a blanket over the gytrash, eyes crinkling at the corners as he looks down at it. “You’ve done a good thing, today. You’ll have thirty points for Gryffindor.”

“Professor?” John skirls, raising his brows. _Thirty points. Jesus._

“Oh, go on with you,” the man growls, waving a hand at him. “Don’t you have work to do?”

“It’s Saturday, sir.” John coughs at his own cheek. “I mean, thank you, of course.”

“Hagrid,” he says again, shaking his head. “Now go on; get out of my house.”

John picks up his bag and heads for the door. “But, hang on. What about Holmes?”

“What about him?” Hagrid asks, poking at the fireplace. John swallows. _What are you doing, Watson? Get out. Go work on your History of Magic reading._

“Well, he’s in Ravenclaw, and he’s the whole reason I came.”

Hagrid laughs. “Alright, ten points for Ravenclaw. But he hasn’t proven anythin’, yet.”

“Do you doubt him?” John asks, curious. His pulse trips a bit in his throat.

“D’you?”

John opens his mouth, but finds no answer. What does he know about Holmes, really? Hagrid smiles at him, almost wry, and John looks down at his bag. After a moment, he tucks his wand away and leaves.


	4. C is for Coruscate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> coruscate (v) | cor-us-cate  
> (of light) flash or sparkle

Stamford has outdone himself.

And _oh_ , where had he found such a man as John Watson? Surely he hadn’t been brought to Hogwarts for the express purpose of Sherlock’s use, but how else to explain the absolute perfection of him? He could be cleverer, of course, but for a member of the general populace he is _perfect_. He’d followed directions quickly and efficiently, had successfully ingratiated himself to Hagrid, was intelligent enough to not be taxing, and had demonstrated little to no care for the bane of the Holmes name. Furthermore, from what Sherlock had seen, he’s an excellent healer. His spellwork is impeccable, which begs the question of what that ridiculous rag of a hat had been thinking placing him into anything but eighth year. It’s enough to make Sherlock demand a reassessment.

“Oi, Holmes!”

Sherlock turns, scowling. This is the issue with being about at dinnertime; too many students in the halls. “Yes?” he says, eyes searching the crowd for the source of the voice. The corridor is a mess of bodies flitting in and out of sight, robes flashing bright spots of colour amidst all the uniform black. From the corner of his eye, a frantic seventh year waves a hand at him, attempting to step around a group of cowering Slytherins. Hair, mouth, and tie say mother is Japanese, works in the fashion industry. Fingers and eyes say father a British accountant, comportment and clothes say only child, muggleborn, Ravenclaw; been exercising, rode horses as a child, windswept, Quidditch, likely from the pickup game he’d passed with Watson passed earlier. Freckled, milk-white skin, bluish black hair, sloe-eyed and attractive in a societally acceptable sort of way. Greeney? Greerley? Arrogant, older; captain of the team. What does he _want_?

“Aidan Greeley, Quidditch Captain.” Expecting a handshake, whilst dripping with sweat and mud? Mycroft would be appalled.

Sherlock frowns. “Yes, I can see that.”

The boy hesitates a bit before clearing his throat. His hand drops awkwardly to his side. “Look, I… um, we saw you flying earlier. And you’ve got a bit of a reputation for having a good eye, and -”

“No.” Sherlock turns and heads towards the doors of the Great Hall. He has to find Watson before dinner starts.

Greeley’s footsteps echo behind him, following quickly. About as tall as Sherlock, but unused to the quick pace. Used to taking walks with his father, who has an injury of some kind? Heart condition? Damnit, _irrelevant_.

“Look-”

“You already said that.” Sherlock strides down the hall towards the Gryffindor table, searching the myriad faces for dishwater blonde hair and deceptively dark blue eyes. People are staring; Sherlock sneers at them. A Gryffindor first year wavers a bit before looking down at her soup.

Greeley clears his throat again. Merlin, what an awful tell. He must be shite at feints. “You don’t even know-”

“I know precisely what you want. You have decided, by some criteria unbeknownst to me because clearly I am not a team player nor do I have any interest in becoming one, that you want me as your seeker because the war was awful for Quidditch prospects and Ravenclaw has in past years been a perfectly cliché example of how physical and intellectual excellence are frequently mutually exclusive. This is your last year here, and likely your last year playing real Quidditch considering that your talent was not sufficient to attract professional interest, and you are desperate for a win before you take your leave. But, as aforementioned, I’m not interested. Ta.” Ah, there. Sitting with an overly animated boy with an alarmingly expressive grin. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have other business to attend to.”

Sherlock takes a moment to glance towards the staff table. Madame Pomfrey is seated, as usual, impeccably on time. When he looks back, Watson is grinning up at him bemusedly. Thankfully, Greeley has taken his leave. Sherlock spots him making his way to the Ravenclaw table, a sour expression plastered on his face. He shakes his head as another student asks him a question.

“Hallo. That was some adventure we had this afternoon,” Watson says. Conversational, hesitant, unsure of their relationship; some rumination on Sherlock’s hasty exit, then. There will be time to fix that later. For now, they have two minutes to get out before the service starts.

“Care for another?” Sherlock says, quirking an eyebrow.

Watson’s eyebrows raise comically, but there’s that same spark of intrigue in them. Sherlock can’t help the smile that tugs at his mouth in response. “God, yes. Now?”

“Yes, now,” Sherlock says impatiently. “Matter of life and death, etcetera, etcetera. Coming?”

Watson stands, putting a hand on the other student’s shoulder and muttering something to him. Sherlock doesn’t stay to find out what it is; he turns away as soon as Watson’s interest is clear, weaving around the students making their way to their seats with the expert efficiency of any citygoer. London has taught him well.

“Hang on,” Watson calls, but Sherlock ignores this, lengthening his stride a bit for good measure. They don’t have time for niceties. “Christ, your legs are bloody unnatural.”

Sherlock pauses, frowning. “Are they?” Watson pulls abreast, staring at him oddly for a moment before shaking his head.

“No, god no. Sorry, that was rude of me. You’re just fast is all.” He grins, albeit sheepishly. “You’re going to be quite tall when you’re done, aren’t you?”

Sherlock shrugs, setting out at a quick trot again. Irrelevant, question brought about by an insecurity regarding height in a society that arbitrarily associates stature and masculinity. Ridiculous usage of the word _done_ , as though he is a pastry that hasn’t set yet. _Must train inaccuracies out of him._

“Sorry,” Watson says again.

Sherlock heads through the Great Staircase and towards the Quad, and Watson pads after him, dutiful albeit a bit grumpy in his confusion. Worried about his perceived offense? Not enough data; cannot see his face and run at the same time. He does not ask questions, and Sherlock is reminded again of his need to thank Stamford for his introduction. Holmeses do hate to owe anyone anything.

When he turns into the corridor leading to the Infirmary, he pauses and pulls his wand out. Watson stares at it warily.

“I assume you know the disillusionment charm?” Sherlock says, and Watson raises his brows at him before pointing at the door.

“What the hell are we doing in there that you can’t be seen?” His lips quirk – _fascinating_ – before curling into wry accusation. “You wanted to hurry so Madame Pomfrey would be at dinner while we were here, and you don’t know if anyone’s injured themselves or if the wing’s empty.”

 _Well_ , isn’t that quaint? Sherlock can feel the corner of his lip twitch; he tamps it down with the words for the charm, and Watson blinks a bit to find him gone.

“Watch the hall, stall for time if anyone comes by. Especially a professor, or Madame Pomfrey.”

Watson’s mouth drops open in surprise. Interesting, how absolutely transparent his facial expressions are. Refreshing, almost; nothing is hidden by farce. “Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.”

“This is important,” Sherlock says, and slips into the Infirmary. Watson’s curses follow him into the wing. 

Empty beds, rumpled sheets where the house elves have yet to attend. Smell of blood and poultices, vomit where one student coughed up – ah, there. James Phillimore, knocked out cold. Alive, albeit pale. Being monitored.

“Watson!” The door creaks open. Watson staring over his shoulder, wand out, muttering under his breath. Charm to alert them if a professor comes by? Clever boy, surprisingly so. Always surprising, it seems. “Come look at this.”

“I thought I was on lookout,” he grumbles, padding towards the bed. He cannot see Sherlock, but he knows where he must be. “And that’s a _he_ , not a _this_.”

Sherlock ignores this, and Watson leans down to inspect the listless body. Must acquire data on other drowning attempts. Madame Pomfrey would not protect her notes; no need. Side office should have – ah, locked. Hm, complex ward patterns, set to trigger if anyone unauthorised enters. Medical records, laws, _tedious_. Desk reveals used tea cup; quick siphoning of DNA and a bit of replication to trick the ward scans should work a trick.

“He’s out cold.”

Sherlock frowns, fiddling a bit with the ward. His eyes are filmed over with a spellsight charm, and when he turns back to stare at Watson the boy glows gold. _How many spells has he wrapped himself in?_ “Perfectly sound analysis, but I was hoping you’d go deeper.” Protection, luck, _hypervigilance_. PTSD and habit, left over from time travelling through warzones. What would he need such heavy protections for here? Ridiculous.

“What am I doing here?”

Sherlock rolls his eyes and turns back to the ward. Some sort of scanning charm linked in with the lock charm. Recognition of physicality as well as DNA? Sherlock can mimic Poppy Pomfrey’s spellcasting easily. He shifts his balance a bit, holding his wand with three fingers, and twists his expression into something stern. The illusion, the charm, the unlocking, and…

“ _Yes_.” Sherlock grins as the door swings open. Watson clears his throat, and Sherlock turns back to him, halfway through the doorway. “This is an investigation, Watson. Try to use your brain. I know it can be difficult-”

“Oh, shut up you posh bastard,” Watson snipes, and Sherlock lets out a startled bark of laughter. Always surprising, Watson. “What the hell am _I_ doing here?”

“Helping me prove a point,” Sherlock says. Watson responds to the grin in his voice, smiling back even though he cannot see it. _Irrelevant_. Desk, notes, drowning. Sherlock frowns and turns toward the filing cabinets. No, Philllimore was just brought in, so… “Ah, there you are.” Notepad, waiting to be transcribed into the official files.

“I thought I was helping you pass Defence Against the Dark Arts.”

Sherlock quirks a smile as he skims Pomfrey’s notes. No bruising, as suspected, across the board for all victims. Amount of water in the lungs unaccountably high. Took a breath in the water? Against all instinct. Intriguing; glamour must be extraordinary.

“Well?”

Sherlock flips back to the original page, carefully placing it on the desk as he’d found it. When he exits, he closes the door behind him and turns to reconstruct the ward.

“Holmes.”

Watson had been speaking to him “Yes, well.” Sherlock blinks, processing. “This is more fun,” he decides, tying the wards back together. He drops the spellsight charm as well, blinking as the light clears from his eyes. When he turns, Watson is still staring in his direction. “Come on. What do you see?”

“Fun.” Watson quirks an eyebrow before turning back to the body before him. “No sign of a struggle. The only bruising on him is consistent with the story of the squid leaving him on the dock to be saved. Looks like someone did compressions, good on them. It’s an induced sleep, so I’m guessing Madam Pomrey did this. Force him to rest up a bit before he has to explain himself.”

Sherlock nods before realising Watson cannot see him. “As I thought.”

Watson raises his eyebrows, glancing sidelong across the cot towards the source of Sherlock’s voice. “So what, you think he was Imperiused?”

Sherlock raises his eyebrows. “No, but close,” he allows, leaning over to inspect Phillimore’s fingers. Dirt under the nails. Clipped neatly, recent. Signs of good grooming, remnants of hair product, clothes of decent quality if not the best fitting. He taps Watson until he moves out of the way, leaning down to inspect Phillimore’s shoes. Mud across the soles, up to the ankles. Ankle deep in mud. Knees, nails, ankles, robe hem; hadn’t been watching himself and tripped, kept going on his hands and knees. Wand missing, taken from him. Trophies? “I do love a serial killer, even if this one’s rubbish. Always something to look forward to.”

“What?” Watson laughing, thinks he’s kidding. Anyone could see him stiffen when he realises; he telegraphs atrociously. How does he get through a duel without giving everything away? “You think there’s a serial killer at Hogwarts?”

 _Interesting_. Not appalled by Sherlock’s sentiment, appalled by present danger. Body coiled for a fight again, left hand fisted but steady. _What a puzzle you are, John Watson._ “In a manner of speaking, yes,” Sherlock says, straightening. “But he’s made a mistake.”

Watson shakes his head, stepping back from the cot as if to distance himself from the horror of it. Quaint. “No, hang on. James was depressed-”

“No, he wasn’t.” Watson’s mouth curves into a moue. “Or at least, not today.”

“How do you-”

“Look at his hands! His hair, his clothes; this is a man who was well coiffed, prepared for a date. Higgs is a known rake, isn’t he? Phillimore shows none of the distinctive signs of depression. Surely he was suffering at the loss of his family, but even if he had been suicidal, today was not the day to kill himself; this was a man dressed with hope and vanity. A man like this would have poisoned himself instead of allowing his bloated corpse to float across the lake for some unsuspecting student to find.” Sherlock shakes his head, ruffling his hands through his hair a bit to organise his thoughts. “Phillimore was so entranced by whatever he saw on the bank that when he tripped and fell, he kept on going. He literally crawled through the mud. Eventually he picked himself up and kept walking into the water. If he’d been Imperiused, he would have focussed on efficiency in order to fulfil his orders. This is more indicative of an obsession, a monomanic trance if you will. He was glamoured.”

Watson gapes at him for a moment, blinking like a fool. “Incredible.”

Sherlock stares at him. “You do know you do that out loud?”

“Er.” Watson clears his throat. “Sorry, I-”

“No, it’s…” pause, revaluate, “fine.”

Watson stares towards him for an awkward moment, blindly searching for a face he cannot see. Sherlock examines the small furrow of his brow, the black ring around his irises, the surprisingly lush fan of his eyelashes as he blinks. His entire body straightens in a second. “Shite!”

“What?”

Watson pulls himself up, glancing around in a panic as the infirmary door swings open. Sherlock muffles a dissatisfied hiss; he’d been distracted, hadn’t heard footsteps in the hall. Stupid, careless, embarrassing.

“What are you doing in here?”

Watson pales a bit, fingers knotting together. Madam Pomfrey stands in the doorway, a pinched expression on her face.

“She thinks you’re a friend, you snuck in to see him,” Sherlock murmurs in his ear, standing behind him and tugging on the back of his robe. “She’ll just shout at you a bit if she thinks you’re concerned. Play along.”

Watson stiffens, shrugging his shoulders to pull out of Sherlock’s grasp. It’s a calculated move, casual, and Sherlock watches with surprise as his entire body shifts, contrite and hopeful at once.

“I wanted to talk to you in private,” Watson says, biting his lip and shuffling his weight a little. “I… it’s personal, and I thought if I waited for you…”

Madam Pomfrey softens visibly at the sight of his nervousness, stepping further into the room and closing the door behind her. “You set off my wards,” she says, stepping in and briskly checking the room over. She turns back to them, satisfied nothing has been disturbed. “You’re not to be in here alone. Why were you touching Mr. Phillimore?”

Watson winces, rubbing the back of his neck. “He looked right peaky when I came in. My mother was a healer, and I just wanted to check his pulse… it’s rather thready, to be honest, ma’am. You might want to give him another blanket or a warming charm.”

Madam Pomfrey stares at him for a moment before nodding. “Come help me.”

Sherlock watches as Watson follows her to a cabinet, helping her shake out a thick woollen blanket with brisk efficiency. Their hands smooth the fabric over Phillimore’s bluish form in complete synchronisation, tucking the corners of the mattress in tight. Hospital corners, clever boy, winning her over with actions. _Watson, what a surprise you are._ Sherlock can barely contain a bark of delighted laughter when Watson straightens up like a puppy waiting for approval and Madam Pomfrey falls for the trap beautifully, smiling at him and leading him over to her desk. Oh, he’s dangerous, this boy.

“What is it you need from me, then?”

“Well,” Watson hedges, shifting his weight a bit, “I haven’t spent much time in this part of the wizarding world, but I was wondering if you knew anything about ADHD? I think my friend’s got it, and it’s pretty common among muggles, but I wasn’t sure about wizard treatment or if there’s even a concept for it in wizarding medicine… he’s not from a pureblood family, but both his parents have magic, so I’m not sure if they’d have any idea.”

Madam Pomfrey considers him seriously, head tipped down as she squints up at him. Her lips twitch before smoothing into thin line. “Hagrid says you’re excellently trained in healing, and while I wouldn’t dare to ask how he knows that, it isn’t something to take lightly.”

Watson colours, _genuinely embarrassed, interesting_ , before nodding tightly. “Yes, ma’am.”

“And you want to be a healer?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The woman stares at him for a moment longer, turning away to rearrange some of the papers on her desk. Watson rocks on his feet, an affected tic to betray real nervousness. Clever, clever boy. “I’m sure you’re aware that most psychological disorders are hereditary, much like magic.” She glances up as Watson nods, nodding back before opening a book and pulling out a quill. “Because of the way that magic is transferred – through the genes, just as with genetic disorders – the majority of muggle diseases did not affect the magic community until integration became more socially acceptable. The filth that support pureblood elitism believe that what this means is that muggles have tainted the gene pool. They are, quite unfortunately, correct in some ways.”

 _How radical._ Taking a risk, speaking to Watson as such. Calculated. What does she want from him? A hard woman to read. Sherlock inhales sharply as she pulls out a piece of parchment and hands it to Watson. Oh, this is excellent indeed.

“However, I think that what we gain is worth whatever we may have lost. Students like you, for example. How would you like an apprenticeship?”

Sherlock reigns in the childish desire to laugh as Watson’s mouth drops open. “Ma’am?”

Madam Pomfrey’s lips quirk as she sets the parchment on the table in front of him. “I haven’t an apprentice this year. I don’t always have one, but it’s useful to have another few pairs of hands, and we don’t teach proper healing arts here. Usually a few of Mungo’s students do residencies here, in order to get their certification, but during the war we lost a lot of good healers. People were afraid to come back to Hogwarts, and we’re short staffed. You’d be here on a trial basis for the first week or so, but if you prove to be useful you can get credit to put towards certification, if that’s really what you want.”

“I… I would be honoured, ma’am,” Watson stammers, flushing prettily. Madam Pomfrey blushes a bit herself at his effusiveness, and Sherlock rolls his eyes. Merlin, does everyone fall for this nonsense? But Watson, what a surprise. What pure, stupid luck.

“As for your friend, there’s a new potion on the market that might to assist. Functions like a muggle drug, I can’t recall-”

“Ritalin, probably,” Watson interjects. Madam Pomfrey raises an eyebrow at him, and Sherlock snickers silently as the boy curls in on himself at the rebuke.

“Probably,” she repeats, amusement colouring her stern features. “Take that paper and bring it to the headmaster’s office. She’ll know what to do with you. And have your friend come by tomorrow, and we’ll work out the state of them and see if they could use the potion. Confidentially, of course.”

“Of course,” Watson agrees, nodding like a bloody muggle bobblehead. He folds the paper and pushes it into his pocket. “Thank you so much, ma’am.”

“We’ll work out your schedule and find a time for you to come by. I expect you to come when I call, barring other school engagements.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Watson bobs in a little half bow before catching himself, coughing a bit as he backpedals towards the door. “You won’t regret this.”

Madam Pomfrey raises an eyebrow at that. “Who said anything about regret?”

Watson tenses, nodding again before heading to the door. Sherlock is careful to match his footsteps as he leaves, pausing just long enough to feel Sherlock pass by him before shutting the door to the infirmary with a soft thud. They walk back down the stairs in quivering silence, and at the landing Sherlock dispels the illusion charm, revealing his broad grin. Watson takes one good look at his face and bursts into hysterics.

“Oh my god,” he wheezes, clutching his side. “Oh my god.”

Sherlock grins at him.

“Holmes, you are a bloody- how are you,” he shakes his head, eyes watering. “That was ridiculous.”

“Impressive,” Sherlock says, and Watson breaks into another wave of laughter. “You’re much more deceptive than I expected from the wholesome, earnest façade you put on to appease people.”

Watson looks up at him, spine a smooth curve over his stomach as it cramps with laughter. “You’re ridiculous. That was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done.”

“And you’ve trekked through warzones.”

Watson studies him for a long second, and Sherlock freezes – _too far?_ – until Watson laughs again, a high peal of sound, bright and real. Sherlock laughs back at him, helpless to do anything else. _Oh, Stamford, do I owe you a favour._

“Sherlock,” he says, holding out a hand. Watson meets his eyes as he takes it, laughter threatening at the corners. Dark lines frame the blue. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, and excuse my remarks by the lake earlier. You are every bit the Gryffindorian idiot, all bluster and no exit strategy, just trust that charm and righteousness will get you out.”

“Oi!” Watson roars good-naturedly, shoving him a bit as he follows Sherlock down the stairs. “Whose ruddy plan was it? You’ve got a bit of foolhardiness, yourself. You’re just lucky I was able to charm our way out.”

“Charm your way out,” Sherlock sneers. “I was invisible.”

“Oh, right, leave me out to dry, some mate you are-”

“Hungry?”

Sherlock continues down the steps even as he notes that Watson has stopped. “We missed dinner, so I guess you owe me a meal,” he hedges, and Sherlock turns to glance over his shoulder. Watson is smiling, head tilted to the side. Fond, bemused, hesitant. He shoves a hand through his hair when their eyes meet. “Yeah, I could eat.”

“To the kitchens, then.”

He turns, trusting Watson to follow. When the corridor widens, the Gryffindor jogs a bit to walk abreast, and Sherlock notes his unabashed stare from the corner of his eye as they make their way deeper into the castle.

“Can I ask you something?”

“You can,” Sherlock says, turning down the corridor. Watson snorts a bit – _oh, that was rude_ – and glances to the side.

“How do you do it?”

“Do what?” Sherlock asks, cutting back through the courtyard. Watson is silent, clearly grappling for words, and Sherlock takes pity on him. “I observe.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t-”

“When we met, I asked if you were from South Africa or India. You looked surprised.”

“How did you know about that? You weren’t using legilimency, I checked.”

Sherlock snorts. Easy answer, of course. “I didn’t know, I saw. Watch the mud.”

“Thanks.”

Sherlock nods and pushes into the door, sweeping back into the hall. “Tan face, but no tan beneath your collar. You’ve been abroad, but not sunbathing. Weathered skin implies you’ve been living abroad for some time, but you haven’t got an accent so someplace that speaks commonwealth English or has a large enclave of British expatriates. In conversation when you entered the room, Stamford admitted to knowing your mother but implied she was dead, so born in London, and if he knew your mother your parents likely worked together. You’re clearly not pureblood, so, father must have been a muggle. Healer and doctor. You have a limp that bothers you when you walk, but you forgot about it when you got angry with me because your adrenalin kicked in. That makes it at last partially psychosomatic. Together with your bearing, body language, and the bags under your eyes, it implies you’ve dealt with a fair bit of trauma, but you weren’t here on the continent for the war. So, your parents were likely part of some sort of peacekeeping force or international aid association, high stakes situations which would explain the PTSD. It would also explain where your practical battle experience comes from.”

“Practical battle experience?” Watson hedges.

Sherlock rolls his eyes as they make their way through the Entrance Hall. “Stamford brought you to be my partner and you’ve lived in areas of high conflict. Of course you have experience with violent magic. That also explains you being self-educated; moving so much, you were taught primarily by your parents until they passed.”

He pauses for a moment, glancing at Watson. He’s looking off to the side, his jaw tight.

“And then there’s your squib sibling. You don’t react viscerally to the mention of your dead parents, which implies you’ve had some time to get over it, but you stayed on the continent after your parents died when you clearly have connections in London. Why? You’re a Gryffindor, you wouldn’t have been afraid for yourself. You were protecting something, or rather, someone; your sibling. Considering the facts of the war and the fact that your sibling isn’t here, but they were obviously old enough to follow you around Eurasia without dying or you worrying about caring for them too much, they don’t have magic, so, squib.”

“How could you possibly know my father was a muggle?”

“Shot in the dark at first,” Sherlock admits. “Good one, though, because I’m sure now. Your robes aren’t yours; you bought them second-hand. The hem at the edge was burnt by cigarette ash, but you don’t smoke so they had a previous owner. I doubted your father was a smoker, doctor dating a healer and doing foreign aid work. Most poor wizarding families have heirlooms, and you have a few things such as your mother’s watch, but buying someone else’s robes means your father never went to Hogwarts. You’re too British to have a father from abroad, thus, muggle. Also, you use muggle expletives.”

Watson is staring at him, a hand over his mouth. He takes one breath, two, raises it before letting it drop to his side. “That was… amazing.”

Sherlock pauses at the top of the stairwell, turning to look at him. Face caught somewhere between disbelief and a delighted grin, brows creased nearly to his hairline. “You think so?”

Watson laughs, incredulous. “Of course it was. It’s extraordinary.” Sherlock raises his eyebrows. “It’s quite… extraordinary.”

Sherlock snorts. “That’s not what people usually say.”

Watson turns to look at him. “What do they usually say?”

“Piss off.”

Watson lets out a disbelieving huff of laughter. Sherlock stares before smiling back, hesitant. Watson’s brow pinches slightly when he grins.

The moment is broken by footsteps on the stairs; heavy, exhausted, tall male. The dark form reveals itself as Gary Shafiq, clearly up from the Hufflepuff common room, dark curls obscuring his eyes. He tilts his face up at the sight of Sherlock’s shoes, squinting dark, long-lashed eyes as he looks into the brighter light of the Entrance Hall. His long face is pinched with worry, and Sherlock hesitates instead of moving out of the way.

“Phillimore is alright,” Sherlock says, shortly, and Shafiq tenses and offers a suspicious glance.

“What’s it to you?” he asks, but some of the tension leaves his shoulders.

“He’s your friend,” Watson says, and Sherlock raises an eyebrow at the boy before nodding. “He’s looking a bit peaky, but Pomfrey seems to think he’ll be alright. She’s there now if you want to go and see him.”

The Hufflepuff inhales slowly. “I was going there now,” he admits. “Thanks.”

“You knew him before. Your families were friends, purebloods who wanted nothing to do with the war. Phillimore was a rake, but he had few true enemies. Guilt for being what he was in light of what’s happened in recent years.”

Shafiq stares. _Fear, good._ Sensible. “Yeah, that’s all true. You think someone did this to him?”

“You do. It’s why you’re so worried. You think someone tried to hurt him, and you think you might be next. One of the twenty-eight in Hufflepuff? A disgrace-”

Shafiq snarls, wants to go for his wand, grab his wrist, twist, pull. “You misunderstand me. That was not a criticism. I agree.” Watson hovering, radiating menace. Protective, so early. _Charming_. Shafiq spares a horrified glance over Sherlock’s shoulder. Interesting; Watson has a reputation.

“Alright, alright.” Sherlock lets go of his hand. Shafiq rubs at it; farce, barely applied enough force to sting, _childish petulance_. “You think you know who it was.”

“I know I know.” Stomach pain, haven’t eaten all day. Adrenalin rush breeds hunger. “Don’t trust anyone, and avoid the lake.”

Sherlock steps around him and heads towards the kitchens once more. “You’re the first in your family to be placed outside of Slytherin, too.”

Watson freezes, surprise so vivid Sherlock can taste it. Genuinely has no grasp of bloodlines and politics. Blank slate. How… refreshing. “Yes.” Don’t stop walking, ignore the twinge of _Mycroft_ , guilt, fear.

“You’re alright, Holmes!”

Meretricious. Sherlock waves a hand and heads down the rest of the stairs. Watson follows in silence, runs into Sherlock when he stops in front of a still life depicting ripe fruit. Tickle the pear, turn the knob. Watson inhales, sharp with surprise.

The heat of the kitchens washes over them, carrying heavy humidity and the thick scent of a hundred different dishes. “Master Holmes!”

“Hello, Wiggins.” Ear scabbing at a rip, hem of his tea towel singed at the corner. “You’ve been fighting again.”

“Them was saying awful things about you,” the little elf growls, crossing his wiry arms and stamping his foot. “Them was saying awful things about the Holmeses.”

Sherlock smiles despite himself, reaching out to brush his fingers over Wiggins’ good ear. “The Holmes family is not precisely comprised of shining individuals of honour.”

“Don’t say that, Master Holmes! The Holmeses are the cleverest wizards the world ever knew, and that’s the truth,” Wiggins insists, stumbling over himself as he trails in Sherlock’s wake. A few house elves raise a raucous greeting. The irregulars, as Wiggins calls them. Little Dirda scampers up to offer a beaming smile.

“I saved a chocolate tart for you, sir,” she offers, holding up a slightly crumbled pastry between her small fingers. Sherlock grabs it before Wiggins can steal it away.

“What are you giving Master Holmes that smushed rubbish for?” he demands, and Sherlock tugs gently at his good ear in rebuke. “Bur sir, I made-”

“Hush. Thank you very much, Dirda.”

The little elf beams at him and skips back to into the heart of the kitchen, and Wiggins squirms out of his grip. “Why does Master Holmes always encourage them’s nonsense?” Sherlock stuffs the whole pastry in his mouth, biting back a laugh as Wiggins huffs. His eyes widen as he catches sight of Watson behind him. “Pardoning myself, sir! I did not see you had brought a guest! I have been most impertinent-”

“Hush,” Sherlock tries, but it comes out garbled around the pastry. He turns and waves Watson forward. Mouth says beguiled, eyes say bewildered, body language soft. Good. Swallow. “Watson, Wiggins. Wiggins, this is John Watson. Be nice.”

“I am always nice,” Wiggins says, outraged, and Watson breaks into boyish giggles. “Pardoning myself, sir. I have a proper dinner for Master Holmes, a good proper curry, just the way you like it, sir.”

“Oh, Wiggins, tell me you didn’t,” Sherlock says, though he can smell the hot spices in the air now that he’s looking for them. He shakes his head as Faye and Stout stumble out with a large tray of rogan josh and steaming roti glistening with oil. “That’s far too much food for me.”

“The others wanted to try,” Wiggins admits, sheepish, and Sherlock laughs. “I thought we might share what was left, as sir has always offered, but if-”

“Of course, of course. I’d offer to let you sit with us, but I know you won’t.” He eyes Watson as the elves procure a small table and a few cushions to sit on. The Gryffindor’s eyes are wide as saucers. “And you want to know why the others are picking on you. You’re starting trouble, making foreign food and giving it out to the other house elves. I have no sympathy for you.”

Wiggins draws himself up haughtily. “Master Holmes was just complaining last night that sir was sick of this plain British food and that nationalism would kill him faster than the serial killer would. As it is my job to take care of sir and keep him from harm, I took it upon myself to make some of sir’s favourites.”

Sherlock raises an eyebrow as Dirda wobbles by with a large bowl of pakora. “I can see that.”

“Sorry,” Watson interjects, and Sherlock turns back. “You brought your house elves to Hogwarts?”

“Where else would I be but with my master?” Wiggins asks, eyes wide, and Watson stares at the elf as though questioning his veracity. “I serve Master Holmes.”

“Just so,” Sherlock agrees, taking care to hide his amusement lest he upset the elf. Watson glances between them comically. “Wiggins is the only one that’s really mine. When my parents passed, Wiggins came to me at my _grand-mére_ ’s. He was just a child when I was young, and we were quite attached. We have others minding the manor, but Wiggins has taken it upon himself to care for me as head of house.”

Watson’s expression softens. “You were alone,” he says. Winces. Surprised at himself for speaking so frankly. “Sorry, I-”

“It’s no trouble,” Sherlock says, sitting down at the table. “You’re right. Come eat.”

He thinks of his brother, somewhere in London; reserved, hiding from the wizarding world in his muggle paperwork and politics. Tedious, sluggish, cold. He does not bother to correct Watson’s assumption. Instead, he plucks a pakora from its bowl and holds it out to Dirda. The elf hesitates a moment before taking it, nibbling at the edges with a tiny smile.

“Are you a friend of sir’s?” she asks.

Sherlock turns to look at Watson only to find him staring back, blue eyes sharp and assessing. Curious, guarded, kind; his expression flashes something unreadable before he smiles, just a careful edge of his mouth. An offering. “I might just,” he says, reaching for the roti. Sherlock nudges the plate towards him and is rewarded with a wider grin, more confident and encouraging in its warmth.

“Good,” Dirda says, rocking back on her heels. “Sherlock needs more friends.”

“Dirda!” Sherlock snaps, for once in perfect accordance with Wiggins. The bigger elf shuffles her away, chattering in her ear. He can feel a traitorous flush working its way across his cheekbones. Wonderful.

“She’s probably right.” Watson is doling out some curry with far more care than strictly required; avoiding Sherlock’s gaze. He glances up from between thick eyelashes. Interesting. Used to charming women, has he any idea he’s flirting? “You don’t seem very popular amongst the students here.”

Sherlock snorts. “Watson, I believe there’s an adage about glass houses and stones that fits this situation quite aptly…”

“Point,” Watson admits, laughing a little. “You know, if I’m supposed to call you Sherlock, you should probably call me John.”

“Well, John,” and _oh_ , that smile, how… _hm_ , “did you get the adventure you wanted?”

Sherlock listens to the predictable laugh, closing his eyes in pretence of enjoying the food as the warmth washes over him. _You might just, indeed._

 

 

\----

 

 

Sherlock is iridescent, catching everything in his wake and setting it alight with the force of his resolve and the scintillating inimitability of his wit. John has never met anyone like him in his life, and he’s met many a man in the Watsons’ interminable trek across Eurasia. He’d seemed so strange and alien at Hagrid’s, but last night he’d seen how warm the Ravenclaw could be. His relationship with his house elf was absolutely charming; they’d bickered at each other like siblings, but the affection was clear in every word and touch. He wondered if Sherlock was so physical with all his friends once he got to know them. He suspected so; the boy seemed so alone.

“John?”

 _Get it together, Watson._ ”Yeah, sorry, Bill.”

“You’ve got the biggest mancrush on Holmes I’ve ever seen in my life,” Bill says quietly, face devastatingly serious, and John shoves him hard enough to tip over the edge of his wooden chair and send him sprawling to the floor. Several students startle violently awake at the clatter.

Professor Binns pauses, glancing over towards the back of the room with a frown on his face. John can feel heat working its way over the back of his neck, his ears flushing hot at the tips. “Is there a problem, Mr. Murray?”

“Er, no,” Bill says, glaring up at John as he straightens himself.  “Sorry, sir. I just… slipped.”

The professor narrows his eyes at him before continuing where he’d left off. “As I was saying, in 1896, it was discovered…”

John swallows as Bill settles back into his seat, steeling himself before glancing over his shoulder. Sherlock is watching him with an embarrassingly arch expression, and John can feel himself flushing even hotter as the Ravenclaw raises an eyebrow and glances pointedly back towards the board. To his left, he can hear Bill snickering, and John snaps an elbow out at him and turns back to face the chalkboard.

“I hate you,” he snarls under his breath, and Bill puts a fist over his mouth to hide his guffaws.

“John likes coffee, John likes tea, John likes-”

“How do you even know that song? Isn’t that a thing for muggle children?”

Bill snorts, loud as you please, and John drops his head on the table.

“Mr. Murray! Five points from Gryffindor. Please do not disrupt my class.”

John stiffens as something hits the back of his head and falls into the folds of his robe.

“Yes, professor.” John straightens carefully, reaching around to scratch the back of his neck. His hand comes back empty. “Sorry, professor.”

John frowns, reaching again. His fingers bunch in the cloth, scrabbling back into his hood where he can feel weight between his scapulae. Bill yawns exaggeratedly, brushing a casual hand over John’s shoulder and dropping a small polyhedron on the table. John stares down at it, chancing a glance at the droning professor before glancing back over his shoulder. Sherlock is staring at the professor with studied tenacity, his mouth twisted in careful consideration as he jots something down in his notes. John can barely bite back a smile.

“Faker,” he mutters, turning back to his desk and picking the object up. At his touch, the parchment unfolds like a flower, flaps unfurling into a flat plane with sharp, irregular edges. The inside is absolutely crammed to the edges with tight, spidery lines of something that looks vaguely like Greek, and John blinks at it a moment before turning it round to the back.

_Assaulting your fellow Gryffindors, I see. How unchivalrous of you. Meet at the lake? Need to be seen together more if we want to catch our aspirational wetwork expert._

John rolls his eyes at the pun, mouth twisting in a grudging smile as the words wipe themselves clean. He nibbles at the end of his quill as he considers a reply.

_Using yourself for bait? Are you insane?_

As soon as the ink dries on the parchment it begins to curl back into its original form, edges meeting and sealing with silent efficiency until the whole thing is concealed in its original ball-esque form. He looks over at Bill, grinning at the other boy’s flummoxed expression. John floats it back over to Sherlock’s table with a flick of his wand.

 _No more than you,_ comes the reply.

John holds a hand over his mouth to cover his laughter.

 _You’re probably right,_ he agrees, grinning. _Tonight, then._

He’s looking forward to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so first off, I'm so sorry for letting this sit for ages. all of my forty pages of notes and snippets and written chapters were trapped on a very broken laptop, which I didn't even have access to for some time. I spent literally nine hours last night trying to fix it, working until 1 am, until I was finally able to get some of it off. 
> 
> I can't say how often I will be updating, because a lot of my data is still on a mostly corrupted hard drive, but this fic is absolutely not abandoned! thank you to anyone who had loved this story when I posted it originally. please bear with me while I try to wrangle my tech.
> 
> your inspiring and really quite lovely comments are why I fought so hard to be able to continue this fic, so please do continue to leave them. working on this after so long away is going be a difficult endeavour, and the encouragement really means a lot to me.


End file.
